


Lightning Strikes Maybe Once, Maybe Twice

by do_not_confess



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Teenage Awkwardness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 03:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14203614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/do_not_confess/pseuds/do_not_confess
Summary: Tessa is six and Scott is eight when they first meet. That’s the part of the story that has come to her through other people’s oral history: Alma and Carol and Danny and Jordan and her mom’s endless friendly arguments over who had the idea first, who could see the potential even back then, who knew this would work out just great, how cute they were, how tiny, how charming. There are home videos and photos of course, filling the Moir’s basement and her mom’s scrapbooks, but Tessa more remembers hearing about it all than she actually remembers, the beginnings of Tessa-and-Scott having become family lore among the Virtue and Moir clans.Tessa and Scott and the time it takes them to see things through.





	1. Can’t Start A Fire Without A Spark

**Author's Note:**

> OK, so *clears throat* this is RPF, which is undoubtedly dicey territory. For the purpose of this, just imagine that I'm writing about two fictional characters, loosely based on the public personas of Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue. Everything you read here is either based on their book, or on interviews they've given but 90% of it IS JUST MY IMAGINATION. 
> 
> A huge thank you goes to the wonderful iwantthemtostay. Her story "No one writes songs about the ones that come easy" (seriously, you should read it) is basically the reason I wanted to start writing my own and she's also the source of a lot of head canons I have about these two Canadian sweethearts. She's been too kind to bounce ideas back and forth and also to beta this for me. 
> 
> Title for this story comes from "Gypsy" by Fleetwood Mac, a song that makes me think of Tessa and Scott. The chapter title comes from Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark".

_“How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.” – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross_

 

//

When Tessa was just a toddler, maybe four or five, her nana used to take her down to the pond to feed the birds with day-old bread.

She remembers being scared of the geese, big horrible beasts almost as tall as she was then, nearly taking her hand off when she tried to throw them some crumbs.

“They’re strong animals,” her grandmother said to her when Tessa tried to hide behind her, frightened. “See how they go in two with their young between them? They mate for life.”

Tessa was not quite sure what that meant.

“Like Mommy and Daddy?” she asked.

“Sure,” Nana smiled. “They know they belong together, only to each other.”

//

 

**Ilderton, 1997:**

Tessa is six and Scott is eight when they first meet. That’s the part of the story that has come to her through other people’s oral history: Alma and Carol and Danny and Jordan and her mom’s endless friendly arguments over who had the idea first, who could see the potential even back then, who knew this would work out just great, how cute they were, how tiny, how charming. There are home videos and photos of course, filling the Moir’s basement and her mom’s scrapbooks, but Tessa more remembers hearing about it all than she actually remembers, the beginnings of Tessa-and-Scott having become family lore among the Virtue and Moir clans.

It’s not like she can clearly recall the first time she met him, doesn’t remember much of her life before Scott and skating, just that she sort of gradually becomes aware of his existence. He’s always at the Ilderton club where she gets her skating lessons. She’s a shy but determined little thing with ribbons holding up her pigtails, and he’s loud and boisterous, horsing around with his brothers, chasing kids around the rink until they fall over. They skate singles and learn the fundamentals of dance with whoever happens to be at the rink to partner, and only after a while does it seem as if the adults have settled on Tessa-and-Scott. Being older now, she knows it was much more to do with their respective heights and skill levels and the fact that they both wouldn’t jump that well, rather than a chemistry test.

What she remembers about being seven and nine, when they’ve officially become partners, is that she doesn’t talk to him, can barely look at him, really.  

At first it’s weird to be in a hold with someone. Tessa loves skating because it always felt like freedom, like dancing and flying at the same time. Now with Scott there’s a pull there, a force outside of her to be reckoned with. He’s so fast and quick in his turns, easier on the ice than she is. Sometimes he snags her against her own momentum or she feels like a dead weight that he stumbles with. It’s awkward. They fall over each other’s gangly limbs a lot.

“Keep going,” Carol tells them, and they do.

After a while, this changes. She learns that when they work together, she can pick up more speed, can do footwork in quicker turns than she could manage on her own, because she has a partner to lead her. Scott’s hand on her back can shift her, leaving her breathless, his hand around hers allows her body to lean deeper into the edges. In perfect moments, they become an extension of one another.

They still fall a lot and Scott still claims that hockey is better than figure skating. But sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, she now sees a smile on his face when their stroking is in complete synch, when she’s mastered a particular pattern. It looks different than the grin he has on his face when he’s been naughty again, when he’s hatching a plan to pull down Rick Kryszewski’s pants mid-skate or he hides in the cupboard during summer camp so he doesn’t have to go to dance class.

This smile is softer, crinkling up to his eyes, which look like chocolate.

She earns his respect through sheer determination, because she tries as hard as he does, even though he’s a natural on the ice. 

He’s so cheeky and funny that all of the girls seem to have a crush on him despite the moms calling him ‘the Menace’ or ‘that Moir boy’ and so she supposes she must have a crush on him, too. That’s the feeling in her gut, the tilting sensation of excitement when they spin around, when he hoists her up, when they skate in unison or he pretends to kiss her hand in a dance move, right? To have a crush on your partner seems as obligatory as smiling for pictures or putting on your skate guards as soon as you leave the ice. Par for the course. It means she’s kind of proud when she gets to tell her friend Stacey that they are ‘boyfriend-and-girlfriend’ now that Jordan and Cara have decided that they’re an item and Scott has kissed her on the cheek at the Skating Carnival, smelling like candy, but told her that she couldn’t tell anyone. She’s not sure what else it entails since that’s the last time they’ve spoken outside of practice, but as long as she gets to keep skating with him, she’s happy.

She doesn’t really know why she turns down the scholarship from the National Ballet. Looking back on it, she probably had no idea what an opportunity it really was or how unlikely it had been that skating would pan out. It’s not like her 7 or 8 year old self had a career plan. She supposes there was something about skating together, performing together, and ultimately winning together that was so exciting she told them no. She enjoyed the summer intensive at the school, the music, the teachers, but she was so lonely in Toronto, missing familiar faces. Her parents, especially her mom, have told her it’s a wonderful opportunity, and she does love ballet, but it felt weird to cut skating camp short that summer.

She wonders what tricks Scott has learned while she’s been away.

“Would I still be able to skate if I go to ballet school?” she asks her dad. He pulls her into his lap and she knows the answer before he gives it to her.

“No, honey, you wouldn’t. It’s a full time programme. You would have to board in Toronto.”

“Oh,” she says and thinks of Scott and how it makes her feel to be on the ice with him, as opposed to dancing alone.

“Well, I said I was going to skate this year,” Tessa says, looking at her mom. “I promised the Moirs I would.”

Her mom looks both sad and proud and they decide that she can change her mind next summer, if she wants to.

She doesn’t.

\--

Of course, because Tessa is only seven and Scott is nine, he calls her on the phone one afternoon and tells her she’s 'too young for him’. For a brief horrible moment Tessa wonders if he means their partnership and then realises it must have been about the boyfriend-girlfriend thing.

“We should just be friends,” Scott says, very quickly, over the ruckus of at least one other boy on the line, probably his brother or his cousin, who’s picked up the extension. Aren’t they?

“It’s better for skating anyway.”

“Hey, dumbass? Quit hogging the line! Who are you talking to anyway?”

“’S just Tessa.”

“Aww, your girlfriend. Hey Big Hands! How’s it going?”     

“Put the phone down!”

Tessa waits, because there’s maybe more he wants to say.

“I wanna skate with you… but I don’t wanna go out with you anymore,” he blurts out and she can tell he’d like to end the conversation, with his brother listening in.

Tessa swallows quickly and pipes, voice too squeaky: “Sure! Let’s be professional!” because that’s something she’s heard her mom say before and she hangs up before he can. Afterwards she goes to her room and rips the picture of him and her at the Skating Carnival from the pink heart frame that Jordan helped her pick out at the mall. It’s not like he even looked that cute in his stupid tux, on his knee.

Her dream, she decides, is to skate. That’s what she writes onto that sheet at school the next week anyway. Everyone knows the Olympics are the highest thing to aspire to, so that’s what she puts down in careful cursive writing. She thinks about putting Scott’s name in there, but then doesn’t.

 

**Ilderton, 1999:**

When Tessa is ten and Scott is twelve, she has learnt a few things about boys. So here’s the thing: Tessa has learnt not to trust Scott Moir when he tells her to touch her tongue to that lamp post in the middle of February because it will be funny. She has learnt not to trust him when he says he will never fart again when they’re in an enclosed space together, she has learnt not to trust him to always put on fresh socks before practice. These are the things you cannot trust a 12 year old boy with.

She learns to trust him in a different way.

She learns to trust the sturdiness of his thigh or arm under her hand in a lift, first on a mat, then on ice. He’s not that much heavier than her, but he is getting so strong and even when she’s shaking from terror, she knows she can trust his hold on her. “I got you, OK?” he says, eyes sincere while her stomach is twisting itself into a knot and she thinks she cannot do it, but she nods yes and before she can chicken out she feels his determined grip on her hips and with a big swoop, she is up, elevated, floating, catching her balance, Scott’s hand a warm reassurance on her torso, holding her, supporting her, not letting her fall. 

She learns to trust his strangely warm hand when he leads her onto the ice before a competition, an extension of the faith and kindness in his eyes that he somehow only shows her when they’re skating together. “We’ll show them,” he whispers in her face hotly, his forehead not quite touching hers, leading her in an exaggerated spin to center ice for them to take their positions, his hand squeezing her tiny cold one once more for comfort.

 

**Kitchener, 2000-2004:**

When Tessa is 11 and Scott is 13, Carol Moir declares that she has taught them everything she can and if they want to go further as a dance team, they should really have more ice time. There’s no chance of them getting that in Ilderton and Mr Mac, Danny’s coach, is based in Kitchener anyway, so their parents take shifts driving their kids to Waterloo before school, every day.

The parking lot at Bethel Church becomes their rendezvous point in the early morning darkness, three, then four, then five days a week. 

It’s over an hour’s drive and they jump into the backseat of whoever’s chauffeuring them that day, hold their hands against the vents to warm them up before sleep overtakes them, the jostling of the car and the darkness of the early morning too seductive to stay awake. It’s in these hours spent leaning against Scott’s shoulder that his presence somehow sinks into Tessa’s consciousness, the sleepwarm smell of him becoming as familiar as her own bed. She falls asleep to the sound of classic rock or country music and the rhythm of his breathing.

“I got you something,” Scott says one morning as she’s getting into his mom’s backseat. His voice is somewhat muffled because he’s hiding behind a giant Marvin the Martian body pillow, but she can hear the smile in it anyway.

“So I see,” she giggles, and then squeezes in. “Thank you, Scott.”

“It’s so we can sleep better,” he explains, and she grins at him, from her head nestled comfortably against the fabric. His smile is bright in the early morning twilight, all teeth.

\--

That summer, after the last day of skating camp, Charlie drives them all to the movies.

As Scott puts it: “He’s just gotten his licence, so really we’re doing _him_ a favour.”

There’s a bit of a debate as to what they should go and see. The girls want something cute: Jordan goes on and on about the new Reese Witherspoon comedy where she’s a lawyer while Scott makes gagging noises at her and insists they go see either _The Fast and the Furious_ or _Tomb Raider_.  

Charlie – maybe Tessa’s favourite Moir brother because he never makes fun of her – just sighs at their bickering, drops them off at the curb and tells them he really doesn’t care as long as they’re all back in the North End parking lot by 8 pm. “Don’t be late!” he reminds them, as he drives off.

“Where’s he going?” Tessa asks, bewildered. Charlie was supposed to keep this very incoherent group together. 

Scott shrugs.

“Danny has this theory that he's got a secret girlfriend. Although how he managed that when he can barely open his mouth around women, I really don’t know.”  

“I dunno,” Tessa says. “Charlie’s really nice.”

This earns her an incredulous look from Scott. 

The movie question is further complicated by the fact that Jordan and Cara get a text from some guys two minutes later and decide to ditch them to go to the mall instead, which leaves just Scott and Tessa. Turns out the only movies showing this afternoon are a horrible looking teenage horror movie and _Moulin Rouge_.

They study both movie posters. Tessa thinks it’s kind of a no-brainer. One looks like a wonderfully theatrical musical filled with romance and the other one is… _Scary Movie 2_.

“I guess you don’t really wanna see that one, eh?” Scott looks at her like he sometimes does, like he’s humouring her. She tries to school her expression into a neutral one.

“Well, I think you'd have to have seen the first part. Plus I don’t think we could even if I wanted to,” Tessa says, pointing at the ‘R’ rating on the poster.

“Really? Oh man!” Scott grumbles. “Alright then. Come on,” he tells her and marches up to the ticket window.

“Two for Moulin Rouge, please.”

When Tessa fiddles with her purse to get her money out, he waves her hand away and pays for them both. She smiles at him. “Thanks.”

“It’s OK. I earned some good money coaching those 7 year-olds.” He smiles into her face.

“This is not a date, though,” he warns her.  

The movie, it turns out, is amazing, a whirlwind of dancing and singing, so many great songs and a beautiful love story. At first, Scott’s squirming in his seat next to her, huffing and making the most annoying noises whenever something remotely sensual happens, as if watching something so romantic is an imposition, but as the storyline progresses, as Satine and Christian fall in love, betray each other, sing their heart out and dance towards the climax of the film, he grows oddly quiet next to her.

When Nicole Kidman’s character finally dies, Tessa’s heart is in her mouth. She looks over at Scott, and he is completely still, his eyes fixed on the screen.

“I loved it,” she tells him after, when they step out into a dusky evening and the cool air smells different than a few hours before. “Thank you for going with me.”

“It was alright I guess,” Scott shrugs, his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, but he smiles at her. “It had a lot of good songs.”

\--

When Tessa has just turned 12 and Scott is 14, they decide they want to go all the way as athletes. They have big dreams: Nationals, international competitions, Worlds.

It’s the first time either of them ever says ‘Olympics’ to the other and the word feels almost too big and wonderful to contemplate, but Torino is in five years, and why shouldn’t they dream, at least?

She can’t quite imagine a time when she’ll be sixteen or _twenty_ , that sounds so mature. She can’t quite imagine being so good that they can actually take Olympic ice. She can’t imagine what it’ll be like to be this grown up. She watches Patrice Lauzon and Marie-France Dubreuil that year at Nationals and she can’t imagine ever being that sophisticated, that refined.

“It was wonderful,” she says, breathless, after they finish their programme, leaning towards Scott who’s sitting beside her in the stands. He is hunched forward, jaw line set, eyes still on centre ice.

“I want that to be us,” he replies, and there’s a longing in his voice that mirrors her own.

She can’t imagine wanting to stop skating with Scott, ever. 

Their coaches have suggested that they’d better move to Kitchener if they want to progress, for better training schedules and more ice time. Scott has declared he’s up for it, but he’d looked at Tessa, brows furrowed, that evening when their families had all sat together over dinner to hash out the details.

Suzanne and Paul had been there too, to reassure everyone.

“So, you really think the kids could go far?” Tessa’s dad had asked them.

Suze had smiled, the way she always did when she was proud of them: “Mr Virtue, I really do believe they could go all the way. There’s no reason – as long as Tessa doesn’t grow too tall – that these two couldn’t be at the Olympics in 2010.”

That had stunned everyone around the table.

“It’s a great opportunity for them, but Tessa is still so young-” her mom had said, clearly impressed and worried at the same time and Scott had given Tessa a look.

She doesn’t want her age to ruin this for them.

Mrs Moir had interjected then: “They both are. But we had really good experiences with Danny billeting in Kitchener. Tessa is a very mature young lady and I think we all trust Paul and Suzanne. The kids will have each other’s backs. Right, Scott?”

Tessa had smiled at him then, hoping to convince him. He hadn’t really given anything away, but squeezed her hand under the table. The decision, their parents have stressed even while voicing their support, is ultimately theirs.

“We should do it,” Tessa tells him the next morning, while they’re waiting for his dad to come pick them up. Practice has let out early today and they’re both enjoying a spell of sunshine outside the rink sitting on the curb, skate bags at their feet. There’s a languid easiness in Scott’s shoulders as he sits slouched over, elbows resting on his knees, which would never betray how hard he works on the ice, every day. He’s such a fantastic skater, she only hopes to match his skill and dedication.

“You’re up for it, eh?”

“Well it only makes sense. We want to become the best, right?” She wills her face to look earnest and grown-up because she has to make him understand that she is committed to this, to them. Sometimes she feels as if she is way too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for Scott, but he looks at her, a slight smile on his lips.

Tessa rambles on: “I know we can do it. I really can skip grade 8 you know? My teachers think I could easily catch up, academically, and then we’d be on the same schedules and would have so much more ice time. I think that would be key. I know it will be weird, living with other families, but we can make this work.”

There’s a hunger she sometimes sees in his eyes now, when he’s not distracted by hockey or his friends, when they’re on the ice and she can feel it in her body and feel it in his body that they’re so, so good together. That they could be great. She can’t imagine having this feeling with anyone else, so she needs Scott to be in it with her. She knows he’s a total homebody, will miss the rink in his backyard, his Ilderton buddies, his friends at high school, his big, loving family, and so will she, but they’ve got each other, right?

He slings a casual arm around her. They’re close all the time and sometimes he ruffles her hair or bumps her arm, playfully, stuff she’s used to from her brothers. But this is different, this is not training or horsing around. She gets a whiff of his boy’s shower gel and deodorant over the warmth of his own smell, so familiar after four years as partners.

“Alright, let’s do it. Together, right?”

“Together,” she chimes, snuggling into his side. To her surprise he doesn’t pull away. He’s warm from working out, heat seeping out of him into her side where his jacket is unzipped and she burrows herself into the feeling.

He doesn’t take his arm away until his dad pulls into the parking lot three minutes later.

\--

When Tessa is 13 and Scott has just turned 15, they move to Kitchener for training.

Scott pre-celebrated his birthday a couple of weeks ago, so he could have all his Ilderton friends there, and it was a huge backyard affair on the last weekend of the summer, before they both transferred to Waterloo Collegiate. Tessa was invited, of course, but she felt rather out of place with his high school buddies, the only thing she has in common with them being Scott.

So while Scott spent most of the evening shooting the breeze and playing flag football and god knows what other games in what Joe and Alma call their backyard but what is basically just a pasture running onto the back of the Ilderton arena, Tessa spent the evening making up new dance moves with Suzanne in the Moirs’ living room. She remembers laughing a lot, feeling good in her skin, cheeks flushed, body moving to the music. 

At the end of the night, just before she was due to be picked up by Casey, she had tried to find Scott, to say goodbye.

She had stepped down the wooden steps from the patio onto the grass, trying to spot him somewhere in the dusk. There were fewer people out in the yard now, just drinking and chatting. She remembers hearing Scott’s laugh coming up from somewhere out of sight and walking towards the sound of it in the half-dark, towards the corrugated shed where Joe keeps all his equipment.

She still remembers the late-summer smell of the garden, the feel of the cool night air on her skin, the soft sound of music through the open patio doors. She remembers them as clearly as the moment when she realised that he was not alone but had his arms around a girl, had her pressed up against the shed wall, his mouth slanted over hers.

She probably remembers it because it was weird to see Scott, her partner, her friend, like that, with a girl, making out. The same way it would be weird if she’d catch her brother doing the same. That’s what must have been the cause for the weird feeling in her stomach, the stinging in her eyes.

She never ended up wishing him a Happy Birthday that night.

\--

When they move to Kitchener, Tessa skips the last grade of public school so she can be on a high school schedule. She gets to billet with one of the coaches and her family and so does Scott.

She has prayed to grow anything, even just a semblance of boobs over the course of the summer, but there’s almost nothing under the smooth fabric of her leotard, flattened even more by her mom’s eye for quality compression fabric. It’s like she’s wearing Spanx to crush any teenage dreams.

So, she gets it. She’s a 13 year old minor niner and she’s tiny and still has a gap in her front teeth and it’s just weird that she skipped a grade and it’s weird that she can never hang out with people after school or go to any of the extracurricular activities, since she spends every waking moment either in class or training. She’s too bookish and skinny to be considered anything close to cool but she had really counted on Scott having her back here.

They are a team at the rink, on the ice, and when they work out.

At school, they’re known as the kids that skate together, but they naturally move in different circles. He already has a small group from his grade to hang out with, another skater and some hockey players from the club his host mom made him join after a few weeks of sulking and probably some girls who are fawning all over him. He’s always been easy and funny and outgoing and she has always had steel in her belly, but she’s shy and quiet at first, especially now.

Lunch is the worst time of the day for Tessa, the walk down the length of the cafeteria more awful than stepping in front of a panel of judges, her packed, healthy lunch in hand (the nutritional quality of the school meals somewhat lacking for an aspiring athlete), looking for a place to sit. There are lots of free seats that really aren’t free at all, because sitting down at those tables would be a statement, begging for friendship or interaction with people who want nothing to do with her.

She knows she could sit with Scott if they shared the same lunch period and yet she really, really couldn’t. He calls her ‘Kiddo’ and ruffles her hair and has seen her cry (only once, in frustration) and she knows, with the same surety with which she can pronounce her French vocab and do a row of precise jetés around a room, that their familiarity does not and cannot translate to them hanging out at school. He would let her sit with him of course, out of some weird loyalty to her and their families and he would talk to her, but she knows it’d be out of pity and she’d be shaming him according to some unwritten high school code where a 13 year-old can really not simply sit down with a grade 10 boy, even if they skate together.

So she takes to eating her lunch in the washroom and then spending the rest of lunch break in the library, where social interaction is not mandatory.

\--

Her mom or Suzanne tend to do her make-up for competition, making her look like a doll, but Tessa wants to look like the other girls at school, who wear make-up every day and seem so much more grown up. So she takes her allowance to Shoppers Drug Mart and invests in what Jordan calls the ‘necessities’: mascara, blush, eyeliner and sparkly lip gloss. 

It’s fun to play around with it the next morning, when she’s getting ready, and she bats her now black-tinted eyelashes at her own reflection, happy.

She waits to put on blusher and the pink lip gloss at the rink however, a little bit worried that her host mom Becky might tell her mom about her daughter’s new habits. She’s also picked her most flattering workout clothes today, a soft pink leotard with a deep back and black leggings and leg warmers. She’s not sure what she expects, a compliment or just someone to notice. But she feels pretty.

Scott doesn’t look at her any differently though when she comes in, but then he hardly seems to look at her twice, like she’s just become part of the furniture of his life.

As they’re lacing up their skates, he asks her if she can cover for him tonight, because he wants to go hang out with some guys from the rink and shoot the breeze and he doesn’t want to have to tell the Strachans, who kind of have an early curfew for him. She figures he got away with more at home, always sneaking out with his brothers or one of his countless cousins.

“So, I’ll say we’re hanging out together, at your place. That alright?”

There’s something about him just shamelessly assuming that she’ll be an accomplice to his shenanigans when she really doesn’t want to get into trouble with Becky and Scott, who have been really good to her, and who, she knows, have her parents’ trust. She doesn’t want to have to lie to them or her own parents or Alma and Joe Moir.

And yeah, maybe it’s a little petty and maybe it also has a little to do with the fact that he never actually seems to _want_ to hang out with her, off-ice, but she tells him no.

“No?”

“No! I’m not gonna lie for you just so you can go drinking with your friends.”

“What’s your problem, Tess? You wouldn’t have to lie to anyone, all I need is for you to cover for me in case, you know, it should come up. I know you probably have, like, a Hannah Montana marathon planned or whatever else it is girls are into, but other people like to have fun every once in a while. Maybe you should try it sometime.”

‘’I’m not a baby, you know!” He’s made fun of her age before, but it’s always been friendly teasing. This feels mean.

“Sure, you’re all grown-up, kiddo.”

He gets up in her face a little and since her growth spurt last summer they’re nearly at eye level. It worried her at the time, but it sort of comes in handy now as she just stares him down, not retreating, not giving an inch to this idiotic, mean, pig-headed –

Then his eyes narrow as he peers at her more closely.

“Wait, are you wearing make up? To practice?” He looks at her, and then, awfully, horribly, he _laughs_.

So she just leaves him standing there and hurries to the washroom, tears threatening to spill. What looked so sophisticated and grown up to her before now seems garish under the fluorescents they have installed everywhere in this place. She furiously rubs at her cheeks with a paper towel and some water, but they just seem to be getting redder. Now she’s splotchy and the mascara that promised to be waterproof is somehow still smudging under her eyes and she knows she has to go out again to face him and take his hand and smile and for the first time in a long time that thought is not comforting or familiar but horrible to her.

Practice is a mess after that.

First, she can’t find the right lean on their edges as they practice the midnight blues, wobbling a little in Scott’s arms, who today can’t seem to be bothered to actually provide her with enough support in their dance hold to follow his break-neck speed around the rink.

“Again,” Suzanne’s voice comes from the boards, “Scott, I think you have to lead her into it more, especially the bracket. You can only do it together! I’ll re-cue the music and this time I want _both_ of you to commit to it.”

She can hear Scott huffing angrily beside her, but she keeps purposefully staring at a spot about 10 cm to the left of his face.

“Yeah,” he mutters under his breath, “why don’t you commit to it, Tessa?”

Her spine tingles with suppressed anger, but she just pulls herself up and pushes into their pattern once more, once the music starts again.  His grip on her is a little tighter in the second sequence, but she won’t count that as a sorry.

Finally, to her relief, they move on to elements of their original dance for this season and that’s when it happens.

Tessa screws up and comes out of one of their spins too early, effectively kneeing Scott in the groin in the process. He lets out a surprised ‘ouf’ and falls rather gracelessly onto the ice, pulling her with him as the pick of her skate catches, his body softening the blow.

“Sorry,” she breathes, trying to help him up, but she’s sprawled out on top of him.

“Fuck,” he grunts underneath her, wincing, “get off me!”

He’s sworn plenty before, just never _at_ her. She pushes away from him, mortified and humiliated and he pulls himself up to stand, brushing ice from his practice clothes. Suddenly she is so mad at him, at his stupid attitude, at him just ignoring her unless he wants to pick on her, at always being the butt end of his jokes –

His voice is uncharacteristically harsh as he lashes out at her, whether from pain or anger or both, Tessa can’t tell.

“Jesus, Tessa, this is like pre-novice stuff! How freaking difficult can it be? It’s just one simple change of hold, then four counts, then release. Is that brain of yours even switched on, because I swear –”

He cuts off mid-rant as Suzanne’s hand comes down on his shoulder and she simply says: “Scott.”

Tessa’s never seen her face so serious.

Suzanne Killing might just be the sweetest woman they have ever met, and Tessa knows Scott adores her. They both love Suze like a big sister and nothing feels worse than letting her down.

“Break room. Five minutes. Both of you.” is all Suzanne says, before she skates away.

Tessa feels stupid walking into the breakroom at Scott’s heels, as if they’ve both been called into the principal’s office.

There are two hot chocolates in paper cups on the table and Suzanne, sitting between two empty chairs facing each other.

They both sit down. Neither touches their drink. 

Suzanne looks at them and then clears her throat: “You’re both the most promising students I’ve ever had, and that’s not just because of your talent, but because you’re so great together."

Tessa glances over at Scott who is mouthing something like _yeah, right_ , but another look from Suzanne shuts him up.

“You’ve always been friends. But you’re also growing up. I think it’s important that we talk about what that means, both on and off the ice. I have never seen you two like this. What happened? Scott, you go first.”

She waits patiently for him to talk, while Tessa fidgets in her seat.

“I dunno, I just got mad.”

“Because of the mistake?”

Scott rubs his face. “Yes. No. No, I mean, that’s – that doesn’t really matter. She is just always on my back, nagging. _Scott, have you done your homework yet, Scott, you really shouldn’t eat so much candy, Scott, are you getting enough sleep, Scott, you shouldn’t focus on hockey so much._ ”

Tessa winces. Does her voice really sound as shrill?

“Well, sometimes you won’t listen to me! You broke your arm playing flag football two years ago and we missed Sectionals!”

“And I said I’m _sorry_!”

“Tessa?” Suze intervenes. “Are you still mad at Scott because of that?”

Tessa doesn’t have to think about the answer.

“No.” To her own surprise, she really isn’t.

“No, I just mean – he’s sometimes not very careful and I don’t – I don’t want him fail his classes or get into trouble or – to get hurt.”

Scott sighs, exasperated.

“It’s like she’s my mom or something.”

“Can you tell Tessa how that makes you feel?”

He chews on his thumb nail, eyebrows furrowed and Tessa shoves down the urge to tell him to stop. He doesn’t quite meet her eye.

“Dunno. Just makes me feel like she,” Suze puts a hand on his shoulder and gestures towards Tessa. Scott corrects himself. “Makes me feel like you don’t think I can handle myself. Like you don’t trust me or something.”

Now he’s looking at her, and his brows have softened and that melts something inside of her that has been clenched tight ever since he laughed her in the face. She does trust him, at least in all the ways that really count.

“I do,” she says. “I just wish –” her voice gets stuck a little on the words, but she forces them out. “You’re so mean sometimes.”

Scott looks penitent: “I’m sorry for what I said on the ice. You’re great, we just made a mistake together. I probably didn’t do a good job mirroring you in the spin and that got you confused –“

“No, not that,” she says, clinging to her hot chocolate for courage and feels Suze’s hand warm on her shoulder. “He – he made a joke about my make-up.”

Suzanne’s voice is full of kindness. “Go on,” she says.

Tessa looks at Scott and his face is so open and confused and that makes it easier.

“I just – I just wanted to look nice and maybe I overdid it, but you laughing at me really hurt.”

There’s some things Scott maybe can’t understand about her, precisely because he’s a boy. It’s not like he feels the need to make himself look better every day. He’s so confident. 

Then Scott’s hand is on hers, all warm and slightly damp.

“Sorry, T, I guess it was just weird seeing you with all that stuff on your face. You don’t need it.”

Suzanne sighs.

“Scott, Tessa is allowed to wear what she wants or dress like she wants to. Just like you are. It’s not nice to pick on that.”

“I know that,” Scott nods. “I just… she’s pretty without it.” He clears his throat. “And with it, I mean. She can do what she wants.”

“Thanks.” Tessa gives him a watery smile.  “I shouldn’t be so sensitive. I think I’m just really homesick. And there’s really no one I can talk to if I’m feeling sad or lonely and…”

Scott looks stricken, as if he didn’t know at all that she was feeling this awful.

“Me too, Birdie. I miss home.” She likes this nickname, he knows. “But you’ve got me, you know that, right?”

“Not at school, I don’t. But that’s OK. Besides, I don’t want you to hang out with me out of pity.”

“Tess, you’ve _always_ got me. It’s not pity. We’re friends.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. But more importantly, you’re my partner. The best partner a guy could ask for.”

Suzanne looks at them, proudly.

“Always remember that partners have respect for each other. Partners don’t put each other down or pass blame. When you’re working together, you should be each other’s rocks. It’s not ‘Tessa made a mistake’ or ‘Scott made a mistake’. You win _together_. You make mistakes _together_. And whatever issues you have, we’re going to solve them here, talking.”

She lets them finish their hot chocolates and then they skate again, and it’s the best Tessa has felt in weeks.

After that day the sessions with Suzanne become a weekly thing. It feels good to get out stuff, and it somehow helps her see that despite all his bravado and bluster, Scott’s feelings are all right there, barely under the surface. All she needs to do is learn how to read them.

They begin to notice how the other teams often seem squabble on the ice, the thousand little ways in how they put each other down.   

“You know what? They’re wasting their ice time,” Scott says to her once, watching two pairs skater across the rink. “Let’s skate, eh?”

It’s not like he never makes her mad again, but they have it out differently now, it’s as if Suzanne has given her the gift to look at Scott in a different light, as someone whose feelings are maybe more easily hurt than hers.

And Tessa realises slowly that when she praises him, he does so much better. Whatever she gives him in trust and support, he gives her back twice. “I’m here,” he tells her, leading her in and out of difficult elements, hand sure on her back. When she screws up, he just pulls her up again, and just like that, they become a _we_. It’s like with any new habit or task, the longer she does it, the more it becomes second nature, the decision to trust him fully turning into muscle memory.

Danny jokingly calls their sessions with Suzanne ‘marriage counselling’ until he says it one time too many as he drives them home one Friday and gets thumped in the shoulder by Scott, eyes blazing.

“Shut up, dick”, he tells his brother and then turns around and mouths _sorry_ to her over his shoulder.

\--

As autumn turns into winter, Tessa and Scott start hanging out more. They go to each other’s houses after practice, because they are both weary to their bones but also hopped up on exercise endorphins and it becomes their thing. Scott always fixes them a snack because they’re too hungry to wait for dinner, claiming that even letting her make a grilled cheese is a safety hazard (she just forgot to turn them once, god, and they ended up burnt on one side and not done on the other, they’re kind of hard to make?) and she does her homework and tries to get him to do his. It’s quite amazing that his focus and excellence in sports do not translate one bit into academic rigour, but she guesses that’s why they balance each other out.

He challenges her to dance parties around the kitchen every once in a while, calling himself her healthy distraction.

She guesses he is.

Sometimes they end up watching TV in her room. She lets him choose the channel while she works on her homework, except on Mondays when _Dawson’s Creek_ is on, which he loathes but kinda gets into after a while, even though he’d never admit it.

“This Dawson guy is kind of whiny,” he remarks one evening, while she’s lying on her bed and he’s sitting on the floor next to her. She looks up from the TV, surprised.

He had looked as if he was doing his Chemistry homework. 

“I know, I don’t really watch for Dawson,” she says. “He’s really annoying. Unfortunately it’s his _Creek_.”  

Scott chuckles.

“So –” he says, closing his book, “I’m probably going to regret asking, but – what’s the deal with him and Joey? And why is he fighting with this other guy?”

She gets excited: “Well, they grew up together as best friends and she used to be in love with him but then she fell for Pacey after Dawson had broken up with her and–”

“Pacey is the cool one, right?”

Tessa rolls her eyes.

“You just like him because the actor’s Canadian and was in those stupid hockey movies.”

“Tessa,” Scott says, taking her hand into his, looking very, very serious. “ _The Mighty Ducks_ are powerful movies about a fallen man’s quest for redemption.” He cracks a smile. “And hockey, of course.”

She laughs and turns her attention back to the episode. It’s only at the end, just before the credits are rolling, that he asks her:

“So, Pacey’s your favourite then, eh?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Just curious,” he says and smiles to himself.

\--

She finally gets her period a shy of her 14th birthday, probably the last girl in her class, definitely the last at the rink. It’s a relief because this is the kind of stuff whispered about in the girl’s changing room, like a secret club she didn’t belong to, where you share tampax with your besties in not so subtle handovers and talk about the horror of the boys finding out, maybe even – gasp! – by accident. Her mom had tried to reassure her: “You’re so slender, honey, that’s just what it is. It’ll come when it’s your time. And isn’t this easier anyway, with skating?”

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? When you’re 13 and your skating partner is nearly two years older than you, the last thing you want is to look like a 9 year old, no hips, no boobs, just a flat whip of a girl. You take somewhat unkindly to Scott calling you ‘Kiddo’, something he wouldn’t be able to do with such ease if it at least looked as if your body had undergone any stage of puberty yet. You don’t think about the gruelling necessities that come with actually having your period, like having to figure out tampons and strange applicators instead of pads, because you have to skate in tight leotards and costumes that leave very little privacy with someone, so closely. Or that you will have to run to the washroom during every break in a panic because you don’t want to risk any accidents.

You don’t think about cramps, either.

“You ok?” Scott asks her one day, at practice, when she’s already swallowed two ibuprofen to tame what feels like a dragon clawing away in her belly and she would love to just double over, or better yet, be held by him in that soothing hug he sometimes pulls her into before a competition, to calm her jitters. It would feel so nice now, just his sturdy boy warmth seeping into her, when she’s so cold from the ice, lower belly and back cramping up badly. He’s still more lithe than a lot of the guys his age, has the trim build of a young dancer rather than that of a hockey or football player, but in the last year his chest has filled out and his arms look so solid, like they could hold her up when she’s feeling so wretched and sad and-

It’s unusually perceptive and gentle of him to ask, but she knows he doesn’t have any sisters and this stuff, she has been assured, freaks boys out, so she just says, “Yeah.”

He doesn’t look quite convinced.

During the next sequence, while they’re practicing transitions, his hand comes up once or twice to rub across her back and it’s not part of the choreography. But after a long day of training, classes and even more training, she just doesn’t have it in her to give it her best.

“Well, that was crap,” is Scott’s cheerful assessment, after they finish their practice from hell. Tessa has botched everything monumentally and in turn, that has somewhat put a damper on his performance, too. Paul had sent them out, telling them to get their act together for tomorrow.

Being kicked out from practice early is meant to be a punishment by their coaches, any time on ice a privilege, but it kind of has the reverse effect on Scott. There’s a smile on his face and he somehow does not look as tired as he’s done moments before.

Tessa just really, really wants to go home. Not home to her host family, but _home_ -home, to her own bed, and crawl under the comforter with some Midol. Unfortunately home is 100 km away and the only bed waiting for her is that at Becky's house. 

“Hey Tess?”

“Yeah?” She looks up from where she’s loosening the laces on her skates, wincing slightly. Scott is looking at her funny.

“It’s that time of the month, eh?”

Oh dear god. Did he notice? Did she… did he… was he able to _smell_ it, somehow? Is the misery written on her face? Is she, like, a walking billboard promoting the fact that yes, she’s Tessa Virtue, 14 years old and currently menstruating?

The last thing she needs right now is having to bear his teasing or some idiotic guy comments about mood swings and female hormones. It’s uncharacteristically harsh for her, but she turns away with a grumpy: “Just save it, Scott.” Not now, not after this godawful practice and the chewing out they’ve had, not when all she wants is to go home and lay down with a hot water bottle and watch some Gilmore Girls.

He suddenly, surprisingly, crouches down in front of her and strokes her head, where her hair is frazzled and has come out of its ponytail. It feels so unexpectedly gentle she almost has to cry. She wishes she wouldn’t feel so weepy.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have- I mean,” he clears his throat, straightening his shoulders, trying to sound serious. “Do you have your period?”

She nods and then looks away, ashamed.

He puts two hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him again. She can’t bear to look him quite in the face, however, staring at his thighs instead, lean boy muscle straining against the elastic fabric of his track pants.

“Do you need anything?”

“No, it’s… it’s just cramps.”

God, this is mortifying. Tessa’s never not wanted to be a girl before, but now she thinks about how much easier it would be to be a boy and not have to deal with this. She wishes he would stop talking, she wishes he would hold her in his arms, she wishes he would just take her home and put on that Sarah McLachlan CD he always fights her over while she watches the street lights pass by the window.

Maybe she should give him more credit for not being an insensitive jerk when it really counts, because he, quite cheerfully, adds:

“Come on, I’ll drive you past the drugstore on the way home. It’s just menstruation, T. Totally normal. You can tell me. It’s better if I know what’s bothering you. Partners, remember?”

“Yeah.” She gives him a teary-eyed smile and he sits down next to her, pulls her into a one-armed hug. It feels so good. It feels like family. His eyes crinkle at the edges when he smiles at her.

“We can be professional about it. Get you hopped on some Tylenol or whatever it is you girls take.” And that makes her laugh.

\--

When Tessa is 14 and Scott is 16 she gets asked out on her first date.

(Going to the Ilderton Carnival with Scott when she was eight doesn’t really count, even though she thought of it that way, back then, what feels like a thousand years ago. She remembers feeling special then.)

It’s easier, to make friends outside skating, now that she’s settled into school in Waterloo. It’s not like she’s in love with this guy, Zach. She doesn’t really know him that well, but it’s not like anyone else has ever asked her out on a date before, and he’s good looking, with a toothy grin and a mop of blonde curls, so she says yes, she’ll go for some ice cream with him on Thursday after practice.

She doesn’t really want to tell Scott, even though she’s kind of dying to know what he would say, like, would he even care?

The night before the date she lies on her bed, listening to Sarah McLachlan and imagining if Zach will try to kiss her tomorrow, what it would be like to be kissed, to touch the hair at the back of his neck (Scott’s hair is cut short there, and the buzz feels nice under her fingers when her hands are there in a close hold). She imagines what it would feel like to have Zach’s lips on hers, have his arms around her, pulling her in…

(When Scott pulls her close and she can actually feel the breath rushing in and out of his chest in tandem with hers, she feels small and big at once, like she’s learning something about him that no one else knows.)

Ugh, why can’t she stop picturing stupid Scott Moir whenever she imagines getting close to a boy? It’s probably just the forced proximity with him that has done her head in, having touched him so often she can’t imagine what another guy is going to feel like.  

On the night of the date, T minus 1 hour, Tessa is rifling through her closet for an appropriate outfit – something cute but casual, something that’ll make her look older but not too revealing, something –

She’s just tried on a dress with spaghetti straps and an empire waist (too juvenile!) and is now sporting a black tube top and a jeans skirt (Maybe? It does show off her shoulders nicely and there’s that baby blue shrug that would go well with it, but what if she’ll get cold and is the skirt maybe too short?). She appraises herself in the mirror and then starts digging through her box of belts. Also lip gloss or no lip gloss? She’s so lost in her thought process she must not have noticed the doorbell ringing, or it being answered or steps on the stairs, because she hears Becky shouting: “Tessa, Scott’s here to see you!” and then he’s already in her room, flinging himself on the bed in the same careless fashion he always does.

“Hey, T, how’s it goin’?” he asks and laughs at her as she shrieks because he’s messing up two neatly folded pile of sweaters and cardigans she just put down on the comforter and knocked over her boxes of scarves and belts in the process.  

“Relax,” he says, pushing up the sleeves of his old grey Leafs hoodie, revealing inches of bronzed summer skin. She knows for a fact he spent his entire summer just hanging out in Ilderton or at his family’s cottage. It’s really quite unfair how easily he tans when she’s always pale and freckled.

“Well, you’re making a mess!” she scolds him, but can’t help but smile when he wiggles his eyebrows and pushes back the ratty toque he’s wearing (probably because he couldn’t be bothered to do anything to his hair). When he raises his arms to fold his hands behind his head she can see a flash of his taut abdomen, between the hem of his sweatshirt and his low-slung jeans, black boxers peeking out. There’s something incongruous about him looking like a total boy stretching out on her blue polka dot throw pillows. She wishes she had his confidence and ease in any situation.

“I’ll help you clean it up later,” he promises, flashing her a smile. “What are you doing tonight? I dunno about you, T, but after that crazy session we had with Paul today, I’m starving. I thought we could maybe grab something to eat and then watch a movie? My treat.”

“Um, I’d love to, but…”

He leans up then and looks at her, properly, and his eyes rake over her outfit and then the parade of shoes she’s got lined up in a row in front of the mirror. His eyes narrow.

“Wait a minute. Are you going somewhere?”

“Just for ice cream,” she pipes, feeling her cheeks grow red. There’s already a healthy helping of Clinique’s peony blusher on them, so she probably looks ridiculous. 

“With who?”

She turns around to the mirror and puts in her earrings before she catches his eyes in the reflection. She sighs. 

“Someone from school. I don’t think you know him.”

“Him.” Scott swallows, and his face shifts when the realisation clicks into place. “Wait, are you going out on a _date_?”

She nods.

“Well, don’t you think I should know about this?”

The indignation in his voice is what sets her off. She turns around.

“Why? You’re not my brother, Scott. I don’t exactly need your permission.”

“Hey! I told your parents I would look out for you and now you’re telling me you’re going on a date with god knows who. What if he’s a pervert? What if he’s a serial killer? What-” his voice lowers to a horrified whisper, “what if he’s a _Canadiens_ fan?”

She gives him a scathing look: “Well, his name is Zach and I’m pretty sure he’s neither of those things.”

“Show me.” Scott says, and grabs her yearbook from her bookshelf. “Is he at Collegiate?”

Tessa sighs, but humours him by thumbing through to Zach's page and photo. She knows when Scott gets like this it’s just easiest to give in. 

He studies the picture for about 10 seconds and then asks:

“What’s his deal then?”

“What do you mean, his deal?” She can’t help keeping the irritation out of her voice.

“Well, what’s he about? He play sports or what?”

Tessa rolls her eyes. It’s like for a Moir boy there are no other ways to spend your free time than in endless competition.

“He’s in the drama club at school, if you must know.”

“Theatre?” he asks, and there’s a distinct note of disdain in his voice. “So he’s the sensitive, artistic guy? The floppy haired boy wonder Tessa Virtue has been dreaming about?”

“ _Really_ , Scott? You’re an ice dancer, remember?”

While this is certainly true, she conveniently leaves out that Scott, while being pretty good humoured about wearing sequins or make up for competitions, is probably the most boyish boy she knows. He, unlike most guys at the rink, is always up for a casual game of hockey, always hanging around in stupid flannels and baggy jeans and boots, way enthusiastic about snow ploughs and and skidoos and fishing and looking like he’s sprung from a Canadian country song.

This is why his musicality, his natural dance ability, his passion for movement and expression is sometimes a shocker to her when they are on the ice.  As if she knows two Scotts.

He gets up from the bed then, crosses the room towards her.

“Well, that’s it, I’m gonna have to check this guy out, T. When’s he coming to pick you up?”

She blushes. “He’s, um, he’s not. Kristen will give me a ride to DQ.”

He stares at her in disbelief. “So-”, his eyes flit back to her laptop screen again – “Zachary Evans doesn’t even have the decency to come and pick you up?”

“Shhh! Will you keep your voice down? Becky doesn’t know I’m going out on a date!” He must respond to the frantic note in her voice because he softens a little, touches his hand to her bare shoulder. His palm is warm and gentle, the feel of it spreading on her skin.

“Be careful, Birdie. If he tries any funny business –”

“Then I will put my foot in his face, tango style,” she suggests.

Scott smiles at that. One time she almost accidentally kicked him in the face during a somewhat aggressive choreography, her blade just barely missing his nose. She had been mortified and he hadn’t let her live it down for weeks.

“I was going to say ‘call me’, but by all means, I’ve seen the power you yield with that limb.”

“Thanks,” she says, and smiles.

“Alright, I’ll go then. You’ve got my number if you need me, right?”

“Yes, Dad,” she says, half annoyed, half fondly, putting on her shoes.

“Ok then. Hey, T?” He taps her on the shoulder and when she turns towards him, there’s a strange smile on his face, like he’s about to tell her something and then he doesn’t.

 “Never mind. You- you look really nice.”

And with that, he’s gone before she really knows what to reply.

In the end it doesn’t matter. Her friend Kristen drops her off at Dairy Queen and she sits on the curb outside for half an hour, watching probably two dozen people come and go, feeling so stupid. She sends Zach a text then:

_Hey! Are you coming? ; ) Did I get the address right?_

It even sounds needy in her own head and Zach makes her wait a full ten minutes for his reply.

_sorry, something came up. cant make it 2nite._

She stares at the text on her screen for a moment, the stupid abbreviation and disregard for upper cases, like he couldn’t even be bothered to type out a proper reply. The characters are blurring in front of her eyes and then, as if on autopilot, she dials Scott’s number, because she doesn’t want to have to tell Becky that she’s been out alone when that’s not something that is part of her host mom’s very detailed arrangement with her parents. No boys, that’s one of the rules. No boys, except Scott, who somehow doesn’t count, but also maybe does a little, because no Scott in her room with the door closed or when there’s no one in the house and no riding in cars with boys, except Scott, and then only to and from school and practice.

He answers with a simple “Yeah?”

“Scott?”

“Tessa. You OK?” She has tried to keep her voice as composed as possible, but he must have detected something in it anyway.

“Can you please come and get me? I’m at Dairy Queen on Pioneer Drive.”

She doesn’t tell him anymore than that, and she doesn’t need to.

“I’ll be there in 10.”

She’s shivering in only her little blue cardigan and skirt, an early autumn snap in the air, when his old beat up Subaru pulls up next to her. Scott gets out without saying a word and wraps her up in a big hug, holding on tight, then pushes her away a little to get a good look at her face.

“You alright, T? Did he try something funny?”

“No, no,” she says, looking at the ground, making her voice light. “He just… he didn’t show up. He sent me a text. There was probably something else he had to do. Don’t- don’t worry. It’s silly. I’m just being silly.”

He doesn’t say anything, but when she finally looks at Scott’s face there’s a muscle working in his jaw, like he’s keeping the intensity in. He stares at her for a moment. The smile on her lips feels a little tight, but maybe he can’t tell. Then steers her towards the car.

“Come on then, T. I’ll take you home.”

On the drive back, his hand reaches over to find her thigh, squeezing tightly. She sits there and thinks that she only ever gets to see the real Scott when they’re alone. Maybe no one else sees him like that? The thought is oddly comforting.

They break the rules that night when he takes her home, Becky and Scott Strachan having gone out. The house is empty and so Scott does come up to her room and switches on the tiny TV on top of her dresser while she takes off her make-up in the bathroom and changes into an old Canada hoodie and some leggings. She’s glad he’s not making her talk about it but she supposes there’s a decent chance that Scott Moir is planning the assassination of Zachary Evans.

She brushes out her hair and joins him on the bed. He wordlessly raises his arm and she snuggles into him, listening to the soothing sounds of _Jeopardy!_. It feels so good to be here with him, just their bodies slotting together until it feels right, until he’s an extension of her, the way they are on the ice, almost instinct now. He’s not that much taller, but he feels bigger somehow, when she’s up against him, all sinewy planes and lean muscle.  

She puts her hand on his chest, underneath her chin, and can feel him tense for a second and then relax again.

Scott doesn’t really move after that anymore, except for when the question to “Ken Dryden won 6 Championships with this team and then election to Canada’s parliament” stumps the American contestant. “Jeez. What are the bloody Canadiens?” Scott mutters, and runs a distracted hand down her hair and Tessa lets her eyes fall closed.

“Your hair is so soft, T,” he tells her, very matter-of-factly.

“That’s cause I don’t use body wash on it like you do,” she mumbles and feels his chest vibrate underneath her chin with laughter.

She falls asleep to his smell again, as she has done countless of times in cars before, in the half-dark lit only by the blue light of the TV screen. When Tessa wakes, she doesn’t know how much later it is, but he’s turned the TV off and is gently shifting her body, tucking her into bed.

“What time ‘s it?” she asks drowsily and he shushes her, brushing the hair from her face. 

“It’s late. I better get going. Tess?” He crouches down on floor, his face now level with hers and strokes her back.

“Yeah?” she breathes, his eyes two glints in the half-darkness of the room, his features mostly hidden. It’s weird when she can’t see him quite so clearly. She supposes she knows every inch of his face but she can’t quite remember it now. She wants to run her hand lightly over his shoulder, feeling the muscle underneath his t-shirt, wants to reassure herself that he is indeed Scott, just her best friend, just the person she knows better than anyone.

 “You shouldn’t even give that dick a second thought. You’re amazing and brilliant. You know that, right?”

He says it like it’s just a fact, not a compliment, and then it looks like he’s about to leave and she can’t bear that thought right now.

“Can you- Can you maybe just lie down with me for a little bit?”

She sees him swallow by the movement of his Adam’s apple, deliberating. This is most definitely against all sorts of rules, spoken and unspoken.

“You can just- stay on top of the covers.”

He settles his weight next to her on the narrow twin, spooning her shape, which is hidden under the blankets, the warmth of him seeping into her even through the sheets and the comforter.

She awakes, hours later, to her face nuzzled into Scott’s neck, the blankets a mess bunched around their feet. She tugs them up then, drapes them around them both. Scott stirs and he pulls her towards him, sighing, murmuring into her shoulder: “I should get out of here before everyone else wakes up.”

His voice is thick and gravelly with sleep but he doesn’t move yet, instead pulls her even closer and so they stay like that for another half hour or so until grey dawn light breaks through the blinds and she sneaks down with him to let him out, instructing him how to take the stairs so they don’t creak and he doesn’t wake up the entire house.

She can’t fall sleep again after that.

\--

At school the next morning, Tessa sees Zach make out with a girl from drama club in front of his locker, and it’s like a slap in the face. Why did he even bother to ask her out in the first place? She was fine before, in her date-less state. This is worse.

Kristen, standing next to Tessa, follows her gaze.

“Oh, yeah,” she says, squeezing Tessa’s arm. “Word is he got back together with his ex. I’m so sorry, Tessa.”

“It’s OK,” she chirps, smiling brightly and then slams her locker shut, trying to assess her feelings. There’s some humiliation and embarrassment and anger, but no real heartbreak. She can’t remember feeling much for Zach, but she can remember the way she felt when Scott’s hand came up to her cheek in bed last night.

It cheers her up a little to receive a text from him at lunch even though he really shouldn’t be texting her from his History class.  

_Hey, T! You tango kicked him in the nut sack yet? Pick u up after school, k?_

She smiles at her phone like a doofus then, until Kristen asks her what’s up.

“Oh, nothing, just something about practice.”

“You’re so brave, Tessa,” her friend tells her, “just putting it aside like that.”

After last period she can’t wait to just get out of there. Looking around the parking lot, she spots Scott’s unruly head of hair in the crowd – he could really do with a haircut, Suzanne has been hassling him about it, he needs to get it done before their next competition, but truthfully, Tessa likes the thought of running her hands through it – he’s standing around with a couple of his non-skating friends, joshing in that way boys do which is so foreign to her. When she walks up, she catches one of his buddies asking:

“Hey, who’s that girl always hanging around you, Moir?”

“Um, Tessa? She’s just from the skating club, you know? I mean I know her from skating, we skate together.”

“Yeah? But why is she always following you around? She your girlfriend, or what?”

At this the other boys break into snorts. Then Scott laughs, too and the sound makes her throat tighten up, her heart a big raw lump in her chest.

“That’s just the skating –Leave it alone, man. She’s just a kid. Don’t be such a dick.”

 _She’s just a kid. She’s just a kid_. The words reverberate around her head and they explain everything – why he looks at her the way he does, so sweet and pitiful and often annoyed, why he came and picked her up and tucked her into bed after she was stood up. She had thought of it as a romantic gesture but that’s how he sees her, like a little sister, someone to take care of and pity and pat on the head.

She steels herself, like she does before taking the ice at a competition, pulls her face together. Says “Hi Scott!” in a really high, bright voice then, a bit too loud maybe, to get him to notice her and not give the impression like she overheard.

“Hey, T!” he turns and looks her in a way she would have swooned over a minute ago but now makes her sick. “Ready to go?”

“Sure,” she replies and gets in his car. If he notices something off about the smile on her face on the way to the rink, he doesn’t say.

//

 

You can reach me at my tumblr, [something-to-confess](https://something-to-confess.tumblr.com/), which is usually about writing and various fannish pursuits but has really just turned into an all out V/M fest lately. 


	2. Just Before Our Love Got Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So, mambo part was good, good energy, but rumba, it _bored_ me. Make me feel,” Marina instructs them and Tessa wonders, not for the first time, what a normal teenage life might be like, having a daily routine that does not involve your rough-around-the-edges Russian coach telling you to make her believe that you’re getting it on with your dance partner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the usual spiel, this is RPF, it's all invented anyway, but if I did get any 'canon' stuff wrong it's not for lack of trying. Just consider it 'AU' then. It's not real, don't come at me!
> 
> So, this is the second chapter and it turned out a little longer than originally intended. Don't expect a third chapter quite so soon, I'll be back at work next week and I haven't written very much of that yet. 
> 
> Also, this chapter includes some remixes of various scenes from movies and TV shows that just screamed V/M and their dynamic to me: The Spectacular Now, The Notebook (I know, I know, bear with me!), Friday Night Lights. Consider them little easter eggs for you to find. 
> 
> Title of this story comes from 'Gypsy' by Fleetwood Mac and the title for this chapter is from Canada's true queen of heartbreak, Joni Mitchell's song 'A Case of You'. 
> 
> Thanks as always to the amazing iwantthemtostay, you're the best person to invent soft Scott Moir headcanons with and your cheering on is the reason this got done, so quickly.

//

When Tessa was in Grade 6, she had to complete a model on birds for Science. She picked the Canada Goose for her presentation, because she thought of what her nana had told her, how it was so cute that they mated for life.

She remembers her dad printing off several online articles for her to study, how she diligently colour coded them with tabs and underlined things in neat pink marker.

 _Canada Geese,_ she reads _, like other goose species, probably find a mate for pure and simple selfishness. Their monogamous relationships may simply be a temporary truce between selfish, competitive individuals rather than an affectionate partnership_. _Just like human relationships, avian pairings involve a series of sacrifices and tradeoffs._

It takes her a minute to look up the word monogamous, but then she gets it. Oh, she thinks, feeling slightly disappointed.

She adds a slide into her presentation, picks a picture of two geese rubbing their necks together. _Geese, being very competitive animals, partner up for survival, picking a mate similar in size and stature. This partnership helps them survive and care for their young,_ she types.

There’s a lot of other stuff she doesn’t really understand, about both _filial and sexual imprinting_ (which the articles tell her, is _phase-sensitive learning_ ), how the goslings latch onto or learn the desirable characteristics of a mate from what or who they see when they are very young, but she includes it all.

“So, are the geese as romantic as you’d thought, honey?” Her dad asks her that night, at dinner, after Tessa has been told to clear her homework from the table. 

“No, it’s just for survival,” she sighs, somewhat morosely. “They don’t love each other like humans do.”

“Maybe not,” her dad says with a twinkle in his eye, “but not all great partnerships have to be romantic.”

She thinks of Scott then, and how she can _feel_ they belong together, how she can’t remember a time when they didn’t and how that is more than a little weird. She doesn’t want to kiss him or marry him, but something she read earlier had reminded her of the way it is between them, the feeling she can’t quite explain.

After dinner she goes back to her room to include another quote in her presentation:

_While the mating bond between geese is not comparable to human relationships, there are similarities: one theory is that the geese’s long-term bond help them cope with stress. There is evidence that the presence of their mate helps lower their heart rates. The familiarity of a partner seems to provide comfort to them._

//

**Canton, 2004-2008:**

She is 15 when she packs her bags and moves to another country and the only person she knows there is her 17 year old skating partner. It’s actually so absurd that they need letters from both sets of parents and Skate Canada to be able to cross the border without the officers suspecting she might have been kidnapped or that she’s eloping with Scott.

It’s only a 2.5 hour drive, but everything seems different across the border.

She hates everything about Michigan, except the skating. She doesn’t like her new place, a soulless apartment she shares with another skater from the rink who is five years older and really standoffish. There’s no trust with the girls at the rink, not the camaraderie she is used to from Kitchener. There’s no one there to talk to at night, except Scott, and his texting skills leave something to be desired. Sometimes she can’t sleep because of how quiet the house is.

She misses her mom and she misses Jordan and she misses Suze.

It takes some getting used to the way the new coaches are with them, harsher, blunter, meaner. She is _actually_ terrified of both of them.

“You have noodle arms,” Marina yells at her from across the rink, “don’t slouch like this!”

She can’t tell her that her back is burning from the relentless intensity, that she feels her knees are about to give in, that she can’t feel her arms anymore because they’re so tired. Scott is next to her, in close hold, sweat running down his face. He looks determined, but up this close she can see the tremor in his thighs. If he can’t handle it, how in the world can she?

Igor doesn’t yell like Marina does, but he says things that cut right through Tessa’s thin veneer of self-confidence.

“Too slow,” he says, after a session. “We need more speed, more glide. You stroke wrong. Too heavy.”

He looks at Tessa when he says it, because who’d say that to Scott? All Scott is is one lean muscle on skates, has glide for miles.

“No. Again,” he says, whenever she doesn’t lean into her edges enough, whenever she can’t find the rocker, whenever she fumbles on a twizzle. He makes them practice transitions into elements with only one crossover allowed and more often than not Tessa runs out of steam before Scott does, not being able to reach him at their meeting point or ending up dragging him in dance hold.

At night, when she lies in her bed, Marina and Igor’s voices ring in her ears. Yes, they are learning, improving, but she hasn’t felt this small on the ice in years, has never felt so scrutinised. Was it really worth burning their bridges with Paul to come here? There are so many people depending on her, who have sacrificed so much that she could be here. Her parents, her siblings, the Moirs, Scott. All she’s ever wanted was to do well, and now she feels like a disappointment.

She wonder if it all gets to Scott in the same way. She’s seen him working his ass off in the gym, trying to build up muscle, has seen the hunger in his eye on the ice, not even complaining about the incessant stroking Igor has them do. He’s still one of the smaller skaters at the rink, has all these ideas for more complicated lifts, his only goal to make the senior circuit as fast as possible. He doesn’t seem that fazed, and yet he is just as winded after their practices, gruelling sessions with no break whatsoever, breaking down everything they thought they’d already mastered.

Marina tells her it is to build them anew, from the ground up, but to Tessa it just feel like she’s being torn down.

\--

She watches the other teams. They are so good, so steady in their elements. They skate like a river flowing over boulders, smoothly, like nothing can trip them up.

Tanith is beautiful, graceful. Meryl is so tiny, like a doll.

“You’re better than them,” Scott says, hotly, when he skates up next to her. “Or you will be. Stop looking.”

“I wasn’t –” Tessa protests, but he’s already taking her with him across the ice, leading her into another sequence.

Skating with Scott is not a river flowing smoothly over boulders. It’s intense, and gruelling and exhilarating. He is the strength behind her, the force driving her into the edges, the power behind her spins, the firm hand on her body, lifting, shifting, leading. The push and pull between them is either electric or ruinous, depending on whether they can handle it that day, whether she can rise to the occasion or he can keep it in.

She tries to match him in his intensity, but all she can really do is be the complement to his brilliance.

This Tessa has known for years: as much as Scott Moir might pretend to be just a simple, down home, regular run of the mill Canadian boy, in motion he is mesmerising. There’s something that transforms him as soon as the music hits, body alive and electric, his expressions so vivid. He outskates her, leaving her breathless, permanently trying to catch up with him.

And yet, his skating lately seems to be all about showcasing her, making her shine. When it works, it’s magical. Most of the time now though, she can’t concentrate on it, too worried about her own performance, like she can’t keep up her end of the bargain.

Marina suggests a tango, even though Igor doesn’t agree.

“They’re not ready,” he’d said cryptically and Tessa reckons he thinks that they (she) won’t be able to pull it off.

Marina tells them: “Your energy. It’s man and woman on the ice.” She follows Tessa’s eyes, locked on another team. “It’s different connection.”

Except the problem is, Tessa doesn’t feel like a woman, she feels like a little girl most of the time, unsure, timid. She looks at Scott, who’s grown another foot in the last year it seems, but still his face is all boy, open and sweet. But his body is changing. He is getting stronger, more muscular.  

Marina makes them touch, has Scott breathing down her neck in the Argentine Tango they practice to get a feel for the character of the dance, has her grabbing his hip, his bicep, wants sultriness, connection, eroticism. Tessa’s never even gotten to first base, and yet she is expected to be a passionate temptress on the ice. It’s so awkward, to switch from the dynamic her and Scott have always had, trusting, sweet, best friends, to… _this_.

She worries about the weight she seems to be putting on, her shoulders widening, the boobs she’s always wanted actually growing now and, well, she knows she could never have been a singles skater with her body, but now she worries about her fitness for ice dance, as well.

She thought she’d be able to deal with it all since she has Scott. And she does, at practice and after school, he’s goofy and friendly and supportive Scott, quite immature for his 17 years, but reliable when it counts. He picks her up, drives her to practice, takes her home, makes sure she’s ok. They have a weekly shopping date at Kroger, where she forces him to put mostly healthy stuff in his cart and he always sneaks some chocolate into hers.

“For emergencies,” he says, winking at her.

\--

This is the thing with Tess: she takes criticism like a fucking good little girl made to eat her dinner. Just swallows it, says thank you, puts on an interview smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and locks it away inside, where she can probably endlessly turn it over and over.

He doesn’t know how she does it.

Scott deals with criticism in one of two ways: anger or competitiveness. Usually both.

He’s always analysing, studying, trying to get them to improve. Gets mad if he can’t understand the scoring, feels like they’ve been done over. He can’t wait to get onto the senior circuit, wants to show all these stuffy old people how it’s done, how they can be so much more athletic, how far they can go.

He gets into a grump when he feels Marina and Igor are unnecessarily harsh. He can take it for himself, but he fucking hates it when they are mean to Tessa. Tessa, by her nature, responds better to encouragement, does so much better when she feels someone believes in her, like Suze always had. Somehow Igor has got it in his head that she’s the weaker link, but Igor hasn’t been around them long enough to know that Tessa had to remember his choreography for them in the earlier days, still sometimes does, that she’s the dancer, the graceful one, the softness to his edges. Marina compliments her every once in a while for that, at least, but Igor is their technical coach and he is _ruthless_.

“If you skate like that at competition, you will lose,” Igor grumbles at them at the boards after a slow, botched pattern and proceeds to tell them in great detail why their edge changes, and particularly Tessa’s, suck.

“Again,” Igor demands. “I want to see deep knees, Tessa.”

“Don’t worry,” Scott soothes her as they skate back to centre ice. He can’t help brushing the tendrils from her ponytail away from her sweaty neck. He could feel her knees shaking on the last sequence and goddamn, he’ll do a better job of leading her through it, this time. “We’ll get it eventually. Together?”

She does much better on the second round and he gets this feeling of exhilaration, as she looks up at his face, all open and trusting and her body just responds to the lightest touch of his. He’s never known a better feeling than their bodies together, on the ice.

She’s not exactly smiling as they skate back to their coach, but her shoulders relax a little while he grabs her hand, her fingers threading themselves into his. 

“Passable,” Igor nods, and by god, sometimes Scott wants to just punch him.

Also, the training here messes with his head. The dances this year all lend themselves to a more mature representation, which is good, but Scott is sure that this tango is going to kill him. So yeah, they want to be seen as mature, a man and a woman on the ice rather than two lanky teenagers skating cute choreography to PG music, but really, he’s not sure how he’s going to deal with Tessa’s body pressed against him like that all season.

He’s taken to wearing a dancer’s belt even in his off-ice session at the dance studio, so as not to embarrass himself.

First of all, there’s the blues, which Marina insists on ‘spicing up’ with a lot of on-ice flirting.

“You did slow dance, no? At school, at prom?” she asks them, rolling her eyes when Tessa giggles embarrassed after Scott has pulled her against his side in what was supposed to be a suggestive manner, but just came off as ridiculous. 

“Is this how you hold your girlfriend, Scott? Think of dancing with a girl, you like this girl, yes? And now you’re lucky, they play slow song, _romantic_ song. At the end, you take chance, you pull her close, like you going to kiss her.”

He looks at Tessa, whose cheeks are pinking up and she won’t meet his eye. He only remembers one school dance from when he was 14 and he’d never try with Tessa what he’d tried with his date.  

Then there are the tangos. ‘Adios Nonino’ is a beautiful piece and will make a stunning free dance, but Igor has them ‘learning the tango feel’ with the help of the Argentine Tango, which is also one of the possible compulsories this season and Marina has been shouting “More passion! More sexy!” at them for about a week until he felt like a fucking creep breathing down his 15-year old partner’s neck, where her pulse was fluttering nervously and he had the sudden urge to nip her there, with his _teeth_ –

She’d gone all soft in his arms in their final pose, like a beautiful flower, folding, and it had been… It had been something.

She smells differently now, too, maybe she’s just using a new soap or lotion, but he’d be able to pick her out of a crowd, blindfolded, because of the smell of the sweet dampness in the hollow of her neck, behind her ears, as they dance cheek to cheek. He wonders what is wrong with him.

He can’t stop watching her.

He watches the bend of her, the graceful ridge of her spine where it disappears into the low back of her leotard, at the barre, as she bends down to retie her skates. He watches the tilt of her head in a waltz, neck long and elegant, leaning into his arms with a slight smile, only the frantic rising and falling of her chest in their final pose betraying the effort it takes her, because she’s a fucking champion, she is.

He catches her staring at herself in the full length mirror in the gym, eyeing her exposed waistline between her sports bra and her leggings and tries to think _brotherly_ thoughts, until he notices the expression on her face, how she frowns at her own reflection.

She’s been talking about getting leaner and he is worried. The other girls at Canton look like twigs he might snap in half if he attempted with them some of the stuff he can do with Tess. When was the last time he’s seen her eat a proper meal?

\--

Sometimes in bed at night, when she can’t sleep, Tessa touches herself.

She doesn’t picture anyone specific when she does it, it’s just mainly nameless fantasies of a boy with broad shoulders and soft lips, someone touching her, gently, down there, just right.

She lets her fingers run over her ribs, down the soft slope of her belly, into her underwear. She wonders if anonymous boy would know exactly what to do, be as feather light in his touches as she needs it to be in the beginning, before the shivering and the wetness and warmth takes over. In her fantasy, she wouldn’t need to give him any instructions.

She draws it out a little, sometimes, because the release feels better then and sometimes, when her orgasm will somehow elude her, at the very end, and she doesn’t understand why that happens sometimes, she’ll let her mind go there, to the burning look Scott gave her in practice the other day, to the way she’s seen him stare at her in the gym, the way he pulled her against him and looked at her not like a sister at all.

She lets herself imagine it wasn’t just part of the choreography and feels the longing build up to an irresistible pull in her belly and then she comes and comes under and around her own fingers. She might be a little ashamed, but she sleeps better after. 

\--

There are parties at Canton. People hang out outside of the rink and it’s kind of like high school and university rolled into one, not that Tessa has much experience with either. There are parties at people’s houses, after galas at competitions, in cheap hotel suites and down hallways. There is a lot of hooking up. Skaters are a tight-knit, weirdly competitive and incestuous community and the team at Canton is no exception.

Scott always tells her she should come along, complains about her being an old lady in a 15-year old’s body, _like seriously Tessa, you gotta live a little, no parents, no host mom, this is our time to be youuuuung_ , and she has never really learnt to say no to Scott Moir and this is how she ends up at one of Meryl’s parties, surrounded by too much underage drinking and too many people than she is realistically comfortable with.

As soon as she steps foot in the house, she remembers why she doesn’t like parties. How do other people do it, just walk into a room without feeling like they’re intruding, like they just belong?

Scott comes up behind her, having held the door open for her as he always does, and immediately pulls her along, greeting people, high-fiving them, hugging a few for good measure.

“Scotty, my maaaaan,” a rather intoxicated guy she recognizes from the gym yells and Scott just waves to him, oozing confidence like it’s his cologne. He is off and into the crowd in seconds.

Yeah, like that, she supposes.

The thing is, she _knows_ most of these people, exchanges small talk with them every day at the rink, but none of them are her close friends. Well, except Scott, of course, but he is not like her at all, always joshing around with Charlie White and the other boys, joking with the girls.

She supposes it must be easier to make friends for the guys, since you can pretty much take them at face value. The girls here all seem very sweet on the outside, but by god, there’s quite a lot of backstabbing and bitching going on. Maybe she’s been ruined for female friendship, Tessa muses, because her parents set her up with a boy when she was just a tiny girl and while she’s become somewhat fluent in _Scott_ , she has just never learnt how to deal with a woman she is not related to. 

She goes to put her coat in one of the many spare rooms going off from the main entryway, in what she realizes must be Mr Davis’ study. There is a large pile of jackets on the leather sofa and she wonders for a moment if she could just stay here, pick one of the books from the shelf, hide herself away and read. She tells herself she’s being ridiculous.

When she comes back to the party, Scott is already busy trying to convince Meryl and another girl, Brooke, to join him in a round of ‘Canadian beer pong’, arms around them both. He says something in Brooke’s ear over the loud thump of the bass and she giggles, turns into his side and puts a hand on his chest as she does, head thrown back coquettishly.

 _Ugh_.

He might look handsome in his button down and dark jeans now, but she knows his preference for horrible baseball caps (she made him take off his in the car, he has her to thank for that) and ratty sweatpants and this truly atrocious old runners he refuses to throw out: _They’re my lucky shoes, Tessa!_

The girls here act as if he’s God’s gift to womanhood, but she has seen him pick his nose and had to smell his farts and just because he put on a shirt and his hair looks good, for once –

And now, for some reason, he is pulling said shirt up, letting Brooke pat his abdominal muscles, laughing in a way that makes his eyes so soft. He’s such a horrible flirt.

Somehow the thought of joining him is no longer appealing.

She turns away and there are a ton of people engaged around her, in dance, in conversation, looking like they’re having the time of their lives, all swept up in something she isn’t a part of. She just stands there, smiling like an idiot. Tessa’s previous experiences with parties have mostly been Ilderton backyard affairs, where everything had felt like family. There had always been Jordan or Suze or Danny, pulling her out of herself, making her dance, making her laugh.

So she flees to the kitchen under the pretense of getting herself a drink, smiles at Fedor pouring something into a cup for Tanith, who, as always, looks like a million dollars.

Man, Tanith must have nerves of steel, dating Marina’s son.

“Hey girl,” she says sweetly.

“Oh, hey,” Fedor says, as if he’s only just realizing that she’s there. “How’s it going? You’re skating with Scott, right?”

“Yeah,” she says, can’t believe he doesn’t even know her name. “I’m Tessa.”                     

“Cool. You want a drink, Tessa?” he asks her, and she wasn’t really going to drink tonight, but she needs something to do with her hands, and clearly everyone here thinks not drinking is even weirder, so she nods and accepts a red solo cup with unidentified clear liquid in it. When she sips from it, it tastes fruity.

Then, to her horror, Tanith and Fedor begin to make out.

Tessa pulls at the sleeve of her red jersey dress, trying to avoid her eyes, wondering if she should find somewhere to sit down, like she can’t just stay there and _stare_ at them, so she flees the kitchen and nearly spills her drink on someone coming in the other direction.  

“Oops, careful there! Oh, hey Tessa! You finally made it to one of our parties!”

It’s Charlie, and she’s relieved to be able to smile at a friendly face.

“Yeah,” she says, cheeks heating up. “Scott convinced me come with him, he thought doing this kind of stuff would be ‘good for our partnership’.”  

Goodness, she sounds as if she’s being interviewed for TSN or something. She looks over to where Scott is at the other end of the room and smiles morosely. “But I don’t think he’s lacking for company.”

Currently there is a flock? a gaggle? of about five girls crowded around the table where Scott and his friends are setting up their very complicated looking game.

Charlie chuckles and she notices his cheeks are flushed and his eyes are a little glassy.

“That’s just Scott for you. He’s a little bit of slut, isn’t he?”

The sip Tessa’s just taken from her drink gets stuck in her throat at that and Charlie has to clap her back to help her recover from a massive coughing fit.

“I can’t believe you’d say something like that,” she wheezes, tears of laughter in her eyes.  

He smiles apologetically and points to his own drink as if to say _oops, bit wasted already_.

“Sorry, that was crude,” he admits. “I usually don’t cuss in front of a lady. Meryl _really_ hates it,” and Tessa giggles.

“My English teacher would be so disappointed. I should really use more of my SAT vocabulary. So,” he says, pointing at Scott’s peacock display. “What do we have here, then? How about ‘ebullient’? ‘Garrulous’?”

She laughs. “I think ‘impetuous’ fits him better?”

Charlie laughs, a big guffaw.

“Harsh, Tessa. But fair,” he says and winks at her and she wishes parties were just having a conversation with _one_ person. That, she can do. She can even be funny, one on one. She just can’t do whatever it is that Scott usually does.

She looks over to him, arm now slung low around some girl’s back – she’s wearing a crop top and she can clearly see his tanned hand on the creamy expanse of skin, squeezing.

“More like ‘licentious’,” she mutters into her drink, but Charlie must have heard her and his eyebrows draw together. She smiles and shrugs, tries to pass if off as a joke. She doesn’t want him to think she’s a prude.

“OK,” he says, his eyes so kind. “I don’t think it’s quite so serious. I think the word you’re looking for is actually ‘puerile’.”

And then he smiles at her, and he has a really nice smile, lighting up his whole face under the mass of his floppy curls.

She lets him steer her towards a sofa then and they sit down and chat for a while. Charlie tells her about his plans for college, about his interests outside skating. He sounds like someone she could be friends with, someone who she doesn’t have to try too hard with to find topics of conversation. He really is a very sweet guy, even though he has questionable taste in his Canadian male friends.

“Chucky, my man,” Scott calls over to them, interrupting their conversation. “Come and play with us!”

“Only if Tessa can be my partner,” and before she can protest, Charlie’s already pulling her up, dragging her up to the table.

“Ohoooo,” Scott says, “found yourself your own Canadian, eh?”

There is something flinty in his look, though.

He’s got Brooke on his team, and suddenly Tessa is feeling really competitive.

As they’re dividing the ping-pong balls among them, Scott sidles up next to her and whispers, suddenly serious: “Careful, T, don’t drink too much, you don’t have much practice holding your liquor.”

She snaps back: “I’m only going to have to drink if we _lose_ , Scott.”

“Ah, fighting talk,” he winks at her. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

It turns out ‘Canadian beer pong’ is exactly the same as regular beer pong, only with Molson in the cups laid out on a maple leaf flag that Scott probably had lying around in the back of his truck.

It’s a good thing Tessa has two older brothers, because she rocks at beer pong but it turns out that Charlie is a piss poor partner and makes her share all his cups with him and Scott has pretty good aim, so she still gets a nice little buzz from it.

She tries to remember her Science lesson about the appropriate number of alcohol units for someone of her size and gender, but really, how many units is one solo cup of clear fruity stuff and about three cups of beer?

Enough to feel tipsy and slightly more relaxed, it turns out. Enough for Charlie to convince her to dance with him to all the awful music blaring from Meryl’s high end surround sound system, each song worse than the one before, bowling over with laughter when Charlie introduces them with a very convincing Marina impression: “OK, I have saved this for only you, this is next year free dance music, you will love!”

It’s fun and light to dance with him. He’s a little too tall and not as intense as Scott but he loves to make up ridiculous moves too, thrusting his hips in an exaggerated fashion to Nelly’s _Hot in Herre_ , which makes her giggle uncontrollably as she follows his lead.

She catches Scott’s eyes across the room, where he’s sat on the sofa between a number of girls, beer in hand. He’s watching her dance, and suddenly she feels ridiculous with her hand on Charlie White’s hips.    

He looks – there is a set to his jaw, a tension in his shoulders, like she’s done something wrong. But this is what he wanted, right? For her not to be so stuck up anymore, to ‘let loose’ as he’d called it, and he really hasn’t paid her any attention tonight at all.

It’s not like he has asked her to dance.

Instead, he just sits there staring at her like an idiot and maybe it’s the alcohol making her bolder, but she just stares back for a moment and then she decides to get another drink and lets Charlie pull her back to the floor again.

Scott finds her much later, outside with Tanith, who’s also partaken of plenty of the fruity stuff, sitting beside the massive pool in the backyard. They're letting their feet dangle in it, the cool water feels so good against her flushed skin.

Tanith sighs: “Seriously, Meryl’s family must be loaded.”

This makes Tessa laugh, and then she feels Scott coming up behind her, which is weird, because all her senses feel like they’re operating at about 10 percent of their normal capacity, but they’re still working where he’s concerned because there’s a tingle down her spine and then she hears him say her name.   

“Scotty, Scotty, Scotty,” she says when she sees him, grabbing his legs for support so she doesn’t fall into the water, her head feeling like it’s stuffed full of cotton wool. He looks so tall from down where she’s sitting. “Where are all your girls?”

He frowns at her, sighs. She must be such an imposition to him. He’s got her jacket in his hand and motions for her to get up.

“Come on T, you’re drunk and I’m taking you home.”

She huffs dramatically “Yes, Dad,” but she lets him pull her to his feet and wrap her jacket around her. She waves goodbye to Tanith then, and it takes all her concentration not to wobble as she follows him out of the house, to his truck.

“Wait,” she stops him with her hands on his chest, just as he’s opened the passenger door for her, her mouth having a hard time forming the syllables. She’s remembering what Jordan has always drilled into her about parties and boys. “Wait, are you – are you sober enough to drive?”

He takes her hands away from where he is so warm, can feel it through his shirt.

“I’m fine, Tessa. Unlike you I only had the one beer.”

“Oh,” she says dumbly. “OK, then.”  

Embarrassingly, he has to help her from the car to her front step because at some point between Meryl’s place and her condo she’s lost all sense of balance. He fishes out the keys from her purse, opens the door for her. She really wishes he would, but he doesn’t leave then, just follows her into the apartment as she stumbles in and through to her bedroom.

She flops down on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, feeling so, so sad all of a sudden.  

She hears the tap running in the kitchen and then he appears with a glass of water by her bedside.

“Drink this,” he says, “and if you get really dizzy, put one foot on the floor.”

“You’re mad at me,” she sighs. “Why are you mad at me?”

His face softens a little from disapproval to something she might be able to put her finger on, if only the room would stop spinning.

“I’m not mad at you,” he promises and touches his hand to her forehead. It feels cool against her feverish skin.  

“Get some sleep now, T.”

\--

Tessa looks kind of dead in the eye lately, and Scott is worried.

Maybe it’s because there’s been a lot of talk at Canton about partner compatibility lately. People have been switching disciplines or trying out new partners, which is normal in skating, he knows, people outgrow each other in lots of ways all the time whether it be height or ability or just plain ambition. But everyone here treats it like it’s no big deal to leave people behind. Fedor has been put together with and subsequently ditched by Jenny Kirk and something about the constant switcherooing really bothers Scott.

(He remembers a time when they were younger, in Kitchener, when everybody talked about Tess maybe outgrowing him, and how the thought had frightened him, that there might be something that could pull them apart that was beyond his control.)  

He wonders if maybe Tessa overheard the new step coach and Marina talking about how they needed to bring Tessa up to ‘Scott’s level’. Stuff like that always gets around. He doesn’t want her to dwell on it, if she has.

“I couldn’t skate with anyone but you, you know?” he tells her, pulling up to her house, just a sad apartment complex really, where she shares a condo with this other girl from the rink. He doesn’t want to let her go yet when he can basically see the gears whirring in her head. They’ve had a good practice that day.

She looks at him with her doe eyes and he needs her to understand.

“It always felt _wrong_ when Paul made us randomly switch partners. Not just unfamiliar, which would be normal, I guess. But it was like I shouldn’t? I’d stroke or waltz around the rink once or twice with one of the other girls, but I always just thought ugh, when is Tessa coming back?”

“You never told me this,” she says, looking down at her lap, playing with the hem of her sweater.

“I thought it was pretty obvious,” he smiles at her. “It’s like that when we skate, right?”

“Right,” she says, voice small.

He presses on: “There could be no other partner for me. Skating is only skating when I’m with you. Together, remember?”

She looks up at him then, face softer now, a small smile playing on her face. She looks so pretty when she smiles.

“Together.”

\--

Michigan is harder, but it also makes them better, as a team.

She doesn’t know when they started skating their cool down to _Into the Mystic_ , but it has become their thing. After a long day at the rink, when most of the other people have left, Scott puts on what Tessa calls his old-man playlist and they skate to something soft and slow, just stroking up and down, twirling every once in a while, hand in hand.

She is reminded of the time when they were tiny babies, and he’d just ask her _do you maybe wanna waltz?_ and that’d be enough and they’d just skate, not talk. It’s a little like that.

Except they’re not really little kids anymore.

It’s an evening in August and Scott is driving her home from practice. She’s unusually quiet today, but it’s been an awful day with terrible lift and footwork sessions and afterward Igor had pulled her aside and told her she was too heavy, that he needed her to watch her weight so Scott wouldn’t have to work himself so hard.

Now she can’t turn off her brain and that awful voice in the back of her head that tells her that she is a failure, too slow, too fat, not good enough.

Scott looks over at her and then fiddles with the radio, until a godawful country song comes on.

“Oh yeah,” he says, fingers tapping on the steering wheel. “This is my jaaaaam.”

And then he sings along, in this awful falsetto, to _Jesus Take the Wheel_. Despite her mood, she has to laugh, only to squeal in panic seconds later when he actually lets go of the steering wheel as he launches into the chorus.

“Scott!”

“Relax,” he grins, hands immediately slamming back down, gripping firmly. “There’s no one on the road. But glad to know you still have the will to live in there.”

She rolls her eyes at him. He’s such a stupid idiot. “Yeah, just about.”

“Come on, we’ll go somewhere,” he tells her then, fondly, and drives the car down some roads she doesn’t know, until they reach a wooded area on the outskirts of Canton with a parking lot and a couple of picnic benches.

“I stumbled upon this the other day on my run. It reminded me of home, at least a little,” Scott explains. He takes her down a trail, until they reach a rocky ledge with a tiny canyon below them. More of a gulch, really.

“You didn’t take me here to murder me, did you?” she jokes, and Scott laughs.

“No.” He sits down on the ground and then pats the area of the boulder right next to him. “I took you here so you can tell me what’s bothering you.”

She looks at him a bit sceptically. This isn’t Kitchener and he isn’t exactly Suze.

“The therapist is in,” he winks at her and Tessa plops down next to him with a sigh.

Their thighs are touching as they let their feet dangle over the ledge and she can’t help but stare at hers in her shorts, looking pale and wobbly and grossly big, next to Scott’s muscular one.

“So what’s up?”

“It’s nothing,” she says and pulls what she considers to be a convincing smile as the tenses the muscles in her legs which ache from training all day. Tonight, she’ll only have a salad.

“Jeez, Tess, you’re too closed off all the time. You gotta let that stuff out, you know?”

She smiles, despondently. “I’m not sure that’s for me.”

That’s what Scott always does. Scott emotes and Tessa internalises, Scott makes jokes and Tessa laughs, Scott gets angry and Tessa absorbs. That’s their dynamic. He’s the open one, she’s the bowl for his feelings, or whatever. He’s a confusing mix of old fashioned chivalry, sweetness, idiocy and temper, depending on whether things are going his way or not.

“Is it what they said about your footwork? They always tell you that you’re slower than me, but I think you’re just not as sloppy. It’s maybe easier for me to hold an edge, but then you’re the more natural dancer, so I think we balance each other out, you know? You’ve gotten so crazy good lately, I wouldn’t worry.”

He grips her thigh reassuringly, the way he sometimes does in the kiss and cry after a skate, a perfunctory squeeze, nothing more.

“Sometimes I feel I can’t keep up with you, kiddo.”

She looks at him to gauge whether he’s only trying to make her feel better.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he says, smiling, and she knows he’s not lying. It never fails to surprise her, the way he thinks of her, like she’s something special.  

“That’s how I always feel with _you_.” She breathes out, letting it bubble to the surface.

“I just worry about the lifts. Maybe…” her voice gets small, “maybe they’re not working because I’m getting too big-”

She thinks about the other girls at the rink.

“What?” Scott narrows his eyes. “Nuh-uh. We just gotta pop them. You’re easy to lift, with the right momentum.” He thinks for a moment. “Wait, is this about the comment I made about the serpentine lift not working the other day? Cause that’s not what I meant, it just didn’t work the way it was, it put like a weird strain on my lower back, but that’s fixed now that we’ve changed the entry.”

He bumps her shoulder, encouragingly: “You know, it’s my job to put on more muscle to help with that, too. It’s not your fault it took me this long to finally hit my growth spurt.”

She thinks of Igor telling Scott that he’s glad he seemed to have finally hit puberty and how Scott just laughed and then went back to doing squats. She doesn’t say anything, but she feels a little lighter.

“Tess, you shouldn’t listen to any of this negative shit anymore. You’re like, this incredibly talented skater and you listen too much to people who tell you that you can’t do it. That’s just their fucked up way to get you to reach new heights. _I_ know that you can do it. You just gotta tell them to screw themselves.”

“Try this,” he says, getting to his feet. He squares his shoulders, opens his arms and shouts down into the gulch:  “People, get off my fucking back!”

His voice comes back up as an echo, just a moment later, and she breaks into a fit of giggles.

“Now you, T,” he tells her, and when she shakes her head no, he does that thing where he wiggles his eyebrows and she rolls her eyes and pretends that she’ll resist. He pulls her up to stand next to him.

“Who is it that we’re going to be yelling at?” he asks.

She doesn’t look at him, bites her lips but then says “Igor.”

“Good one. What’s he done, besides being a dick of a taskmaster?”

“Told me to lose weight.” She can feel Scott’s hot gaze on her face, his body strumming with something beside her.

“Screw him.” He says, and there’s such warmth in it. “Into the canyon,” he commands.

“Repeat after me: Igor, get off my fucking back.”

Tessa feebly raises her voice: “Igor, get off my back.”

“Nooo,” Scott objects. “You need that expletive in there.”

“I can’t shout-” Tessa protests.

“’Course you can. Do it!”

“Get off… get off my fucking back, Igor!” She’s surprised how her voice rises on the name, hollers back at her from the bottom of the canyon below them.

“Yeah, baby!” Scott hoots, and slaps her on the shoulder “Who else? Anyone else you have beef with? Marina? Johnny? An ex-boyfriend?”

“Yeah, no.” She shakes her head.

“None of the boys at the fancy Catholic school your mother drives you to every day?”

“No.” She wrinkles her nose.

“What do you mean, no? What about that guy who took you to your formal?”

Her cheeks sting with embarrassment. “God, that was months ago. We weren’t- I’ve never had a… um… you know.”

Scott of all people should know that. They’re together almost every moment she’s not at school and it’s not like she’s been squirrelling away secret lovers during their short weekends in Canada.

“Wait, Tess, you’re 16 years old and you’ve never had a boyfriend?”

She is slightly irritated: “When would I have had the time for that? Besides, guys don’t look at me like that.”

He laughs, but the sound gets stuck in his throat somehow. He kicks a rock with his shoe and it falls down into the gulch.

“Yeah, absolutely they do. I’ve seen at least four guys who’ve looked at you like that in the last week alone. There’s that new pairs skater at the rink, the Italian guy, the janitor dude, the creepy cashier person at the grocery store –”

“Scott,” she cuts him off, embarrassed. “They’re not –”

“A hundred percent. Why don’t you think they’d be interested? They were totally hitting on you.”

“Oh my god,” Tess sighs, rubbing a hand over her arm, mortified. “No they weren’t.”

“Why wouldn’t you believe that? Tess, you’re absolutely gorgeous.”

She looks at him, expecting that mischievous look on his face that would tell her he’s just teasing her, but his eyes look darker than their usual hazel, his eyebrows doing that thing where they arch upward, heartfelt and earnest. 

“It’s just weird,” she mumbles.

“What is? Getting a compliment?”

“No,” she says, her sneaker drawing a circle in the dust at her feet. “I’ve just… never even kissed a guy.”

Scott splutters gracelessly and then coughs to cover it up.

“What?” he wheezes.

“Don’t laugh,” she says, slightly cross. “The opportunity has just never presented itself.”

“That’s a damn shame,” Scott declares, and suddenly he’s so close and his hands are on her upper arms, the heat of him searing through the thin fabric of her t-shirt.  “Shouldn’t happen to a girl like you.”

Tessa’s not sure what kind of girl she is, but her focus shrinks down to this moment and this moment only, until she can hear the wind in the trees, the rustling of birds and the sound of his breathing, can smell the clean boy smell of him, fresh cotton and deodorant and _Scott_.

“Doesn’t seem right,” he mutters.

“Just… been waiting for the right person,” she breathes, studying the moving shadows the leaves are casting on his shoulder.

“Right,” Scott answers, voice croaky.

Suddenly the air between them is charged with electricity, like it sometimes is when they’re dancing and in complete sync, except Tessa doesn’t really dare lift her eyes to his face, scared of what’s going to happen if she does, because it feels as if it might be something momentous and life-changing. So she stares at his chest instead, the v of his t-shirt, where his necklace rests in that little hollow at the bottom of his throat, and she can see his pulse jumping there, as erratic as her own, beating in her chest.

“Tess,” he whispers, so quietly she can almost feel it more than hear it and she doesn’t know what does it then, whether it’s her eyes finally finding his or him moving in, but then his lips are on hers, his face tilting so his nose is brushing her cheek as she sighs, opening, letting him in and suddenly his tongue is in her mouth, which feels so _weird_ , because it’s Scott and also because it’s just weird having someone’s tongue _in your mouth_ , touching you like that. But it’s also so good, the way he’s just caressing the inside of her lips, warm and soft and so, so sweet. His kiss is gentle at first, like a question, _may I please?_ and yet Tessa feels as if she’s just wiped out on a sudden turn on the ice, when the world tilts around you and you come to, discombobulated, breathless and dizzy and weak-kneed.

Scott makes a strangled noise when she responds and brushes her tongue against his, like it’s a dance move of his that she simply mirrors, like instinct, and then they’re just full on making out, his hands in her hair and on her back and her fingers fisting into his t-shirt, clinging to his chest. The feeling goes all the way down, deep in her tummy. If she lets go, she might actually fall. 

They break apart after what might be a minute or twenty, she really wouldn’t be able to tell.

“Jesus, Tessa,” Scott breathes against her hair, pulling her flush against him. He looks dazed, pupils blown. The next thing he says makes her heart clench. “I’ve been wanting to do that forever.”

She’s pretty sure he’s exaggerating but, well, after that it is very difficult to go back to being just skating partners.

\--

The original dance for the 2005-2006 season is a Latin rhythm and Marina has selected a rumba and a mambo for them.

Tessa has this theory that Marina might actually be a sadist.

She has made them watch countless videos of ballroom dancers, has been going on and on about rhythmic body movements and hip action, the way they’re supposed to carry themselves, the way they’re supposed to relate to each other, like _this is story of love and passion between strong man and coy woman._

The mambo part, weirdly, is easier. It’s more upbeat, fun (except for that bit at the end of their no-touch step sequence, which provides some blessed relief, but then she literally has to shimmy her butt into his Scott’s crotch, so, yeah). The rumba, however – 

It is _so_ difficult to stay calm and collected rubbing up against Scott now that she’s actually done that, in his car, on the way to practice, yesterday. And can remember the way his face had looked.

She can’t stop thinking about him, the way his lips feel on hers, the way he sighs her name against her skin, when they’re alone, what it would feel like if she could actually convince him to–

“You know, wise person said: Rumba is vertical expression of horizontal wish.” Marina says, pulling her out of her daydream.

Marina cackles when she looks into her mortified students’ faces. Tessa is trying not to look at Scott, feels her own cheeks heating up.

“So, mambo part was good, good energy, but rumba, it _bored_ me. Make me feel,” she instructs them and Tessa wonders, not for the first time, what a normal teenage life might be like, having a daily routine that does not involve your rough-around-the-edges Russian coach telling you to make her believe that you’re getting it on with your dance partner.

The thing is, she _is_ getting it on with her dance partner, and still they can’t put on a good performance. Maybe it’s just very obvious that she is a 16 year-old virgin who has just recently gotten to 2 nd base? It really doesn’t help that Scott needs to be like, persuaded to do anything, like he has this complex that she’s still so young and needs to be protected and _are you sure Tessa, I don’t want to pressure you into anything_ and really, it’s gotten a little old. Like, how can someone give a convincing performance of a horizontal wish if one does not know what one, exactly, is wishing for?

“From top,” Marina yells, and Scott takes her hand. His pupils are slightly blown and his breathing is somewhat laboured even after having just taken a minute at the boards and it’s reassuring that he feels the same… pressure. She runs her hand down his side for good measure before they take their positions (totally part of the character of the dance) and the pained smile he gives her goes all the way down to her toes. _Hah_.

“You’re killing me, T,” he warns her, warm hand around the nape of her neck in their opening steps and oh, then he has the cheek not just to run his hand up but actually _kiss_ her raised leg while she’s in a half inverted lift, resting on his thigh.

After that it becomes a game, a push and pull as to who can be the more brazen of the two, and Tessa’s not sure who wins? It doesn’t help that the end of the mambo section is just a whirlwind of Scott twirling her in and out of various dance holds, leading her at breakneck speed until she’s well and truly dizzy, spinning her into the fastest rotational lift they’ve ever done. He’s gotten so freaking good with his blades.  

They make it through their second run through, taking their sweet time to skate back to the boards to Marina, Scott somewhat hunched over, hands resting on his thighs, as if he’s hurting a little. 

\--

A year ago Tessa would have given anything to have her mom in Canton with her, but now that she’s trying to sneak around with her skating partner, who might be also kind of her boyfriend, it is rather inconvenient that her mother has moved here. Like, they had all this freedom from parental supervision before, and now that they could actually need it, they don’t.

“I’ve got to go,” she sighs into Scott’s neck, while he’s busy trying to kiss down a path to her collarbone. It’s so distracting that she has to grab him by his ears and physically pull him up to look her in the eye. He can be very… dedicated to the task at hand.

He’s got lip-gloss smeared around his mouth and jaw and his hair looks like he’s been in a heavy make-out session in his car for the last twenty minutes, which she supposes he _has,_ so she smooths it down a little, trying to compose herself.  

It’s a good thing she made him park two blocks away from the suburban home she and her mum have been renting for the last three months.

“Scott.”

“You can’t,” he protests, pretending to look angry, then his eyes crinkle.

“No?” she laughs, “You won’t let me?”

“You can’t just leave me here like that,” he whines.

“Like what?” Tessa asks innocently, kissing him again, just below his jaw, simultaneously running her hand up his jean-clad thigh and he makes this raw noise, like he's in pain.

“Like this,” he says and pulls her hand upward, where she can feel him through the fabric, hard. She squeezes her hand and his eyes roll back, almost comically.

“Jesus, Tess.”

It’s unusually forward for him and she catalogues the moment in the calculating part of her brain, for future reference, with all the other things she has learnt lately about breaking down his defences.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, letting go of her hand and she doesn’t know how to tell him how much it excites her when he gets like this, how it makes her feel proud and good in her body, so alive. 

“Just one more for the road?” Scott says then and kisses her sweetly and she just can’t resist him at all, not when he’s like this, so she climbs back into his lap, lips finding his, hands wandering.

She’s late for dinner again that night.

\--

Tessa, he’s certain, is on a mission to kill him.

Like, he’ll take her out to the movies, makes the effort to take her on an actual date, and she’ll just spend the entire time rubbing circles on his thigh, leaning over to kiss his neck, being such a fucking distraction until he can’t take it anymore.

He can’t remember much of the last three movies they’ve seen, since he’s been too busy learning everything about her mouth, her hands, the sounds that she makes.

Sometimes he has plans to take her to dinner, wants to do something nice for her, but more often than not she just tells him she wants to go back to his place after practice where they invariably end up on his bed, making out, his hands up her shirt, her hands down his jeans.  

It seems she’s just trying to see how far she can push him. He’s trying to be a gentleman, respectful of her boundaries, really. He might suggest watching a show – something decidedly funny and unsexy like _The Office_ , even goes so far as to move the action to the living room he shares with two other skaters but then they still end up dry-humping each other on the couch once Tessa learns that none of his roommates are home.

It seems like the harder he stalls, the more brazen she gets.

Ever since their first kiss, he’s been keenly aware of the fact that while she is 16, she really does not have much experience. He just doesn’t want to ruin this for her, all the firsts. They have so much time, he thinks.

He spends his days in a semi-aroused state now though, and touching her on the ice in the ways he has to only makes it worse. It has been his job to know her body for years and the skill just naturally transfers to this.

Like, the rational part of his brain will tell him to cool it, but the lizard part will gleefully register what makes her breath quicken, how much pressure she likes, what it is that gets her off. One of her favourite things seems to be touching him though, the first time he came in her hand she had such a proud little smile on her face.

“Good?” she’d said and he’d kissed her, mind blown.  

He can’t help but love her.

Sometimes she calls him late, from her bed, and they talk in low, sleep-soft voices, so her mom won’t hear.

“What are you wearing?” she whispers one night. 

“You know,” he says. She’s seen him in his pajamas. Or rather, what he wears to bed.

“Are you wearing a t-shirt?” she wants to know and is her voice getting a little breathy? He can’t be sure.  

“No,” he admits, doesn’t want to lie to her. It’s too warm for that. "Just… just boxers.”

There’s a soft _oh_ on the other end.

“You should ask me what I’m wearing,” she tells him, after a pause.

“Te-ess,” he says, and something in his tone seems to annoy her.

“Do it,” she says and by god, she can be so bossy sometimes.

“What –” he swallows, mouth dry. “what are you wearing?”

He’s already half-hard when she answers: “Shorts and an old t-shirt of yours?”

Fuck. Is- is she wearing a bra? God, he can’t ask her that so he just waits to see what else she’ll reveal. He has to adjusts himself in his boxers because he’s a little uncomfortable, but he won’t touch himself just yet, that’ll have to wait until they’ve hung up, he doesn’t want to feel any more like a pervert than he already does.

“I guess – I guess I could lose the shorts?” Tessa giggles.

He doesn’t know how to respond. If he said any of the things running through his head right now he’d probably spill that he would like her to lose them, yes, and then he’d like to kiss her _there_ , like he’s been thinking about sometimes. He tries not to think of her when he jacks off, but it just… happens.

The Tessa in his dreams would let him do that.

“Scott? Have you fallen asleep? Am I that boring?”

“No,” he says, embarrassed. “I – I bet you look good in them. Or – or without them. You’re so beautiful.”

It’s the most forward thing he’s said to her so far and she seems to like it because he can hear her happy giggle on the line.

“You’re sweet. I wish you were here. I should probably go to sleep now, though.”

“OK, babe. See you tomorrow for practice?”

“Yup,” she says. “Sweet dreams, Scott.”

\--

She comes to dread weekends at home, since there is really no good reason for her to go visit Scott or for them to hang out together. Their families are anxious to make up for lost time and so there’s always her brothers coming over for dinner or girl-time with her mom and Jordan or golfing with her dad and she misses Scott _so damn much_ when they’re in Canada, spends endless weekends staring into space, lying on her bed, lovesick, pining for someone who’s just a twenty minute drive away. Hanging out with her sister or mom is lovely, but really, it does not compare to skating with Scott or feeling his lips on her, his hands on –

So it’s no wonder she’s overjoyed when he just turns up one Saturday morning and tells her mom that Marina called and that they have to go over something in their free dance again.

In fact, he’s standing in her doorway, chatting to her mom and seeing him here when she hadn’t expected him feels like a punch to the gut, the loveliest shock, as if she’s somehow forgotten how _good_ he looks, with his hair all rumpled, in his Roots t-shirt that hugs his shoulders just right.

“Really sorry about that, Kate,” he tells her mom, who loves Scott to an unnatural degree, at least for now when she’s ignorant of what they get up to in Canton. “But Aunt Carol managed to squeeze us in for three hours of ice time this morning, and I really think we need it.”

He shoots Tessa a look so hot that it could probably have her spontaneously combust, but she tries to pull a neutral face.

“That’s OK,” her mom replies, “you two kids don’t exert yourself too much, alright? These weekends are meant to be your relaxation.”

Scott nearly chokes on that, but somehow squeezes out a thank you. Tessa grabs her skating gear, fingers twitchy with anticipation, tells her mom not to expect her before dinner and they take off in the direction of Ilderton together.

“So, I fibbed. There really isn’t any ice time for us this morning,” he tells her, as he puts the truck into gear.

“Oh thank God,” she blurts out and the look Scott gives her is so liquid and charged, she feels as if she might melt.

She can hardly keep her hands off of him in the car, but he admonishes her with “I need to focus on the road, geez, Tessa, compose yourself!” and surprisingly he doesn’t just drive her to a secluded spot to make out as she had hoped.

Instead, he takes her down a dirt road a few miles from Ilderton to a plot overlooking a steep bank leading down to the river, flowing lazily below them.

Then he finally kisses her a few times, because really, it’s been too long, but extracts himself from her arms before she can get anywhere with it. If it wasn’t so frustrating, she’d be admiring his self-control.

He gets out and opens the door for her, because his mom raised him to be a gentleman. Mostly.

“Come on, T, I wanna show you something.”

\--

She looks so fucking pretty and a little pissed off as he helps her out of the car, but she giggles when he carries her across a muddy bit of ground in a twirl and plants her in front of the barn, looking down over the water.

He’s come prepared: there’s a picnic blanket he lays out for her on a grassy knoll and he’s brought tea in a flask and some of his aunt’s Angel Food cake with strawberries.

As he arranges their food, she just stands there, looking out over the land. Then she looks at him questioningly. 

“This is my uncle’s. He’s had it for years but he’s not going to move out here, he wants to be closer to town for work. I’m gonna buy it when we win Worlds and then I’m going to build a house here.”

Tessa doesn’t say anything, which is a little worrying, just looks out over the river, a breeze rustling her hair. She looks so beautiful like this, almost no make-up, so young. He steps up behind her and loops his arms around her waist. She lets her weight sink against him.

“It just needs some walls, really, and maybe – a roof?”

She laughs, and it’s a happy sound that he feels down to his toes. She turns around in his arms.

“Oh, is that all?”

“Well, maybe a house. Running water. Some furniture. You know, if you’re into that kind of luxury. But I love it – it’s right on the water and the barn here could house all my skidoos and the snowplough I’d have to get for the driveway.”

She pulls a face. “Hey, what about me? Do I get any say in this?”

“Do you want to have a say in this?”

His voice sounds so damn needy and there it is, the sappy truth he’s been trying to hide from her, that he’d like forever with her, a house, children someday, _everything_. He’s not sure that’s Tessa’s dream – she loves books and travelling and culture and has spoken about university after skating, internships and law school and whatnot and he somehow can’t picture her here, in the boonies, in a house so far from a main road.

He hopes none of this shows on his face, buries it in her neck, just to be safe.

“I do want a say in it,” she says, nuzzling against his chin. It pulls at something deep in his gut.

She steps out from his arms, looks back at the hillside behind them, squinting into the afternoon sun.

“I want one of those big old Victorians, with sash windows, columns and a wrap-around porch.”

“It’d be a new build, though, T.”

“I know, just, you know, style-wise.”

“That’s it?” he chuckles. “Just a mansion, please?”

“Well, you know, just big _enough_.” For what, she doesn’t say. “Oh, and gable windows and those old chimneys you see sometimes. It should be white, with pale green accents. And lattice details.”

It sounds like a doll house, but he’ll take it, her excitement is too cute.

“Won’t it look weird, such a fancy house here on the river?” He can’t imagine it meshing well with the plans he has for a massive backyard and the red barn he would like.

“No,” she says, and looks at him as if he’s being dumb, “it’ll look perfect.”

“We’ll sit here,” she says, wistfully, plopping down on the picnic blanket, “and watch the sun go down.”

“Sun goes down over that way,” Scott points out, to the hillside behind them.

“Sunrise then,” Tess concedes, as if that’s just some minor detail. Scott doesn’t tell her that he can’t imagine her getting up that early, but maybe they’d be able to do that during the winter months and then he thinks of long nights with her by the fireplace and _oh_. He has to kiss her.

It escalates quickly, his hands ending up in all sorts of places, his self-control slipping away. It’s difficult when she sighs so prettily and just pulls him closer. He’s busy breathing her in, the sweet smell of her sunshine-kissed hair, the more intriguing scent rising from the neckline of her t-shirt, when she whispers something in his ear that makes him freeze, half-panicked.

“I think we should have sex,” she says.

Oh God. He’s not sure he put on clean socks this morning and his boxer briefs might be the ones that his mom accidentally put in with a coloured wash, rendering them grey – 

“What?” he splutters, “Here? Now?”

He’s been thinking about it, of course. He hasn’t really thought about anything else for the past few months.

“No,” she says, looking determined, like she does when they’re about to attempt a new, difficult element. “But soon. We need to plan this.” 

\--

When it comes to losing your virginity, Tessa believes in being prepared.

She needs a time, she needs a place and she needs some top-notch birth control. She has already found the right person, the perfect person, the only person she could see herself doing this with.

She could go to Planned Parenthood and get a prescription, but everything health-related in the US is so expensive compared to Canada and she’s also worried about what hormonal birth control might do to her body. Like, a girl at the rink tried it last year and put on 8 pounds in a couple of weeks.

Plus, she thinks Scott should pull a bit of the weight for this.

“Buy some condoms,” she tells him, one morning as they’re lacing up their skates. She kind of enjoys his reaction, his mouth gaping slightly, the way his neck flushes.

“Not the off-brand ones,” she adds and that must be what snaps him out of it, and he responds, rather irritated, with: “Of course not, I’m not an idiot, Tess!”

Then he clears his throat, looks around anxiously to see that they’re not overheard: “But are you really sure, I mean –”

She sighs. He can be so dense sometimes.

“Be prepared, Scotty.”

And with that, she walks off to meet with Marina and Igor for their technical review.

\--

About a week after Tess has sprung the whole buying condoms thing on him he’s lying in his room, staring up at the ceiling.

She hasn’t exactly shared her plans with him, and he thinks about the best course of action. He’s done as she’d asked and now there is a fresh box of Trojans stashed in a Rite Aid bag underneath his bed, but he doesn’t know if he can actually use them with Tess. Like, of course he _can_ , he’s been basically running around fighting a permanent boner for the past few months. He wants her so badly, but this is not just about that? She’s his best friend, the best person in his life and he’s always been looking out for her and maybe this is one of those times where he needs to go against his impulses to keep her safe.

He wants to get it right. Has to get it right.

His train of thought is interrupted by a scratching noise outside of his window, like a possum or a giant squirrel or maybe a burglar and he’s a little freaked out because his room is on the ground floor and even though Canton is super suburban he maybe shouldn’t have left his window slightly ajar, like he’s used to from back home. Before he can make the decision to get up, however, he hears a muffled sound and the window opens and then a decidedly Tessa-shaped figure tumbles in, landing on the rug with a soft _oof_.

“Hey,” she says, her teeth gleaming in the low light as she smiles.

“You’re incredibly stealthy, you know,” he grumbles, not wanting to let her know how freaked out he was, just a second ago. “You could be, like, a jewel thief or something.”

She giggles and within seconds she is by his bed, lifting the covers: “Move over, Scott.” and he slides over on his narrow queen, making room for her on the mattress.

In the half-dark of the room he can tell she’s only wearing a skimpy skirt and a tank top and then she kisses him, and _oh_.

“What about your mom,” he says, breathlessly, between kisses.

“Left for London to look after Aunt Sharon who’s just been released from the hospital. Won’t be back for at least two days.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” she chuckles against his lip. “She’s fine. Got a new hip. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for weeks. Didn’t you get my texts?”

He scrambles for his phone under the pillows where he’d thrown it carelessly after coming home from practice and dinner with Chuckie. There are several missed calls and then a bunch of texts, all from Tessa.

 _< Hey babe, _ _Mom is gone for a couple of days! Tonight? Do you want to come over? >_

_< Ok, since I haven’t heard from you in two hours, I’m just coming over to yours now. You there? I don’t wanna ring the doorbell. Can’t wake your roommates.>_

_< Nevermind, I’m coming in.>_

When he looks over at her, she has a wolfish grin on her face.

“Do you have the condoms?” she asks.

Oh god. He is screwed.

\--

Their first time is the sweetest and most awkward Tessa’s ever felt.

Half-way through undressing her, he asks her if can switch on the lamp on the nightstand and even though she feels self-conscious, she nods yes.

The sudden brightness is a bit of a shock, but then she also gets to see more of his face, the sheer devotion on his as he takes off her bra. There is a bit of sting in her heart when she can’t help but notice that he must have done that before, but she shoves it down. She knows he is not as inexperienced as she is, he had a girlfriend before and surely they must have –

“Jesus, Tess,” he sighs, into the soft skin just above her breast, his hot breath ghosting over her. “Your body is ridiculous.”

She wants to respond but is momentarily silenced when his mouth closes over her breast and sucks, gently.

“You’ll have to talk me through this,” she tells him, because that’s what makes her feel safe with him, on the ice. She strokes down his torso, all taut ligaments and muscles under warm, warm skin, holding on. Thank god he sleeps shirtless, it makes her feel less awkward.

He chuckles: “I’m not sure I can, when I also haven’t done this before, babe.”

“You haven’t?” she asks, shocked, trying to keep her voice neutral even though she’s bursting with happiness at his admission. “But, I thought, with Katie –”

He looks away, sheepish, down between her bodies, him in his boxers, her in her rucked-up skirt.  

“We – we nearly did, but it just didn’t feel quite right. I mean, we did pretty much anything else. Sorry, you probably don’t want to hear that.”

Oh. That explains his… deftness as well as his relative reluctance with her regarding this and suddenly so much stuff seems to make sense.

He presses his forehead against hers, so close she can’t really make out the colour of his eyes anymore, just feels the intensity of his gaze.

“I’m glad it’s with you, Tess.” He nips her bottom lip with his teeth.

She can’t help but grind up against him then, feeling so full of need and yearning for him, just wants him closer, closest. Doing so causes the sweetest friction, his hardness pressing into where she’s already so soft and wet and aching and Scott lets out a choked sound.  

The next bit is somewhat of a blur, the most frantic fooling around they’ve ever done. Frustratingly, he keeps pushing her hand away even more than usual but proceeds to stroke and kiss every bit of her that’s revealed to him.

When he reaches her underwear and lays a soft-open mouthed kiss to the patch of skin just beneath her hip-bone as he pulls her panties off, she freaks a little, he’s way too close to –

Thankfully he is easily distracted when she pulls him up to her, skin sliding on skin.  

“Please, Scott,” she says, because _please make love to me right now or I might actually die_ is a bit too much, maybe.

Even though her cheeks are burning she looks down as he fetches the condom from the bedside table and rolls it onto his erection. He is so beautiful, all taut boy planes of muscle and sinew, ruffled hair, bronze skin in the low light. She has to catalogue this moment, for later.

He looks – reassuringly normal in size, but how does she know, really? How his body is different to hers and yet complements it in so many ways will never not be fascinating to her.

“You OK?” he asks, when he catches her staring. “You sure you want this? We really don’t have to, you know, we’ve got all the time in the world, T, we can –”

She leans up, kisses him to get him to stop talking.

“My mom is not going to be in London forever.”

“That’s not what I meant.” He strokes her cheek and the fondness on his face is almost a little too much, like she’s staring into the sun.  

“I know. But I want you. I’ve wanted this for a long time, Scott.”

Somehow, that seems to do the trick and he pulls her towards him. She takes his hand, guides his hand to where she needs him most. He touches her, tentatively, like she’d dreamed about he would, at night in her bed.

“Fuck, Tessa, you’re really wet.”

Her eyes are screwed shut now. “Yeah,” she breathes.

It doesn’t really hurt, like Jordan had warned her it might, like Kristen told her it had. There’s a moment of tightness, Scott babbling apologies into her neck, and then they’re the closest they’ve ever been.

It’s a little overwhelming, and so Tessa moves her hips, testing. She can feel Scott shudder in her arms, pulling away a little, and that feels so good, if unfamiliar.

When she opens her eyes he is pushed up on his arms above her, head turned away, refusing to look at her. His eyebrows are doing something she has never seen before.

He looks as if he’d rather be anywhere than here.

“Stop,” he grits out, a hand slamming down to still her hips and she realises she’s been the driving force behind all of this, _made_ him buy the condoms, _broke_ into his house, brushed all his concerns away and basically threw herself at him. What if this is not actually what he wanted? They never really talked about it, she just assumed, he was a teenage boy, surely he would –

She is mortified.

“Oh Scott, I shouldn’t have – if this doesn’t feel good, we don’t have to do this, honestly – please, just look at me?”

Her voice is very small and she moves her hand up to his face.

He’s still looking at a spot about ten centimetres from her face, breathing heavily.

“It feels bloody amazing.” He swallows and runs a hand down her side. “ _You’re_ amazing, T.”

She relaxes a little, but she’s still confused. “Then what –?”

“I can’t look at you right now, Tess, because if I look at you right now I’m going to come,” he grits out, looking like he did when he was concentrating on the Algebra problems he never could solve on his own.

Relief washes over her.

She loves him so damn much. She could whisper it against his skin now, but maybe it would be a distraction for him, too.

“Well,” she tells him instead, “you bought more than one condom, right?”     

In the end, it lasts only a few minutes and she doesn’t come, but it doesn’t matter, because Tess discovers that Scott’s fingers on her are actually better than her own, not quite right and almost too much but then _so much better_ , since she can’t anticipate his next move and he takes her over the edge when he kisses her breast, never faltering in the rhythm of his fingers, murmuring into her ear how pretty she is, how much he wants her.

It also helps that Scott is indeed a teenage boy with a pretty short recovery period.

\--

They fight more now that they’re together. It’s like Tessa has finally found the confidence to tell Scott when she thinks he’s being an idiot, and while he is fond of all the ways in which she’s too intense, too nerdy, she can be a bit much sometimes. They’ve always handled any on-ice difficulties with aplomb, ever since Suzanne gave them the tools to do so, but off-ice is a different matter.

There’s virtually nothing that they agree on. They’re just two very different people. She wants to go see a Hepburn movie, he wants to go go-karting. She wants a quiet night in, he wants to hang with their skating friends. She doesn’t want to tell anyone, he’d like to take her to the next Moir barbecue as his date. They disagree about song choices, about whether she should eat more, about whether he should think about applying to university.

It would be infuriating, if they hadn’t found a more creative way to resolve their differences.

Still, he is the best thing to ever happen to her. She never knew she could be so happy, floating in his arms on the ice, feeling his loving gaze on her.

\--

One Friday in December Scott walks back to the car after having helped Tessa to the door with her thousand bags, like seriously, why does one girl need that many things, it’s only for a weekend and then they’ll be back in Canton? Although come to think of it, maybe she did pack that cute little pink set with the white hearts on it. He could text her later, after dinner with his family and sufficient time has passed. Until it won’t seem weird if he takes off and claims a meeting with some buddies. He could meet her somewhere and –

He’s somewhat lost in his daydream of Tessa in her underwear when he gets into the truck and so it’s only as he’s buckling up that he notices Danny’s look.

“What?” he asks his brother.

“Dude, seriously? This is a _terrible_ idea.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You and Tess.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Scott. There was, like, this palpable _thing_ between you just now when you said goodbye. Are you making a move on her? Because, let me tell you… _don’t_.”

Scott supposes they’ve gotten a little careless. He didn’t kiss her goodbye, obviously, but maybe he’d let his hand linger on her back a little too long as she’d been fishing around in her bag for her keys and maybe, just maybe, his face had looked a little… telling? It’s so easy when she’s got his heart in her hands, when he’s used to having his hands all over her body now, on and off the ice.

“I’m not.” Scott says, grumpily. Danny doesn’t have to know that that particular ship sailed a while ago.

He should have given his brother more credit, however, because he’s completely blindsided by what comes next.

“Fuck, you totally have! Wait, are you _sleeping_ with your skating partner?”

Scott knows he doesn’t exactly have what they call a poker face and when Danny sees his reaction to the question, he just groans in response.

“God,” his brother rubs his face. “I mean I know you’re a moron when it comes to girls, but I really thought you’d know better than to hook up with your _skating partner_ , someone who you need to rely on for the next few years, for your career. Like you can’t just have sex with _Tessa_ of all people and expect that things will be just normal –”

“I don’t! It’s not just sex,” Scott says with more than a little anger. He really wishes Danny would stop referring to Tessa as just his skating partner. She’s… everything. “It’s not like that. I love her.”

Danny looks at him, eyes softening, his facial expression turning to pity. “Oh no. No, Scotty, no.”

“What? Why? What’s the big deal? I mean, it’s Tess. She’s my best friend and she’s amazing. _We’re_ amazing. We’ve never skated better!”

Scott can’t help keeping the happiness out of his voice. What is Danny’s problem? Danny is Tessa’s biggest fan, way more than he’s ever been a fan of the other girls Scott’s been with. His whole family loves her, she’s basically the very well-behaved daughter they never had.

“Really? And what happens when this will eventually runs its course? Which it will, Scott, you know that! You’ll fuck it up because you’re bound to. You’re 16 and 18 years old, for god’s sake, it’s not like you’re going to get married! Are you really risking the most important thing in your life for a teenage fling? I mean I know you guys and the way that you are and I know _you_. You love skating. Your partnership is more important than romance, Scott. I mean, you’ve got Worlds coming up, a shot at the goddamn Olympics. I thought you were smarter than that.”

“I know,” Scott says, hurt that Danny doesn’t think he can do this. He doesn’t know how to tell his brother what he’s been feeling, ever since he kissed Tess on that ledge all those months ago, has maybe been feeling for years. “It’s… different with her. She’s the best thing in my life.”

Danny looks at him for a moment, a heaviness in his shoulders.

“I believe you, but I really think you’re playing with fire, little brother. She’s still so young.”

“I know,” Scott grits out. He’s been thinking about it. He knows of his responsibility, that he needs to look out for her.

At last, his brother sighs, puts a hand on his shoulder. “Please tell me you’re at least responsible? I don’t want you to get Big Hands into any trouble.”

“I would never hurt her.” Scott says and Danny nods gravely.

\--

They lose their shot at the Olympics at Nationals by less than three points and somehow everything turns into a mess. One minute, Tess is crying into Kate’s shoulder, their parents and siblings around them and trying to console them, the next they’re alone and she’s rambling on about ‘taking a step back’ and ‘cooling it off a little’ and ‘maybe we weren’t thinking straight’. He’s too dumbfounded at first to realise what she means until it _hits_ him, she’s not talking about skating, she’s talking about them, about being together.

“What the fuck, Tess?” he spits, can’t believe this is happening now.

She looks at him, wide-eyed. It’s obvious that she’s been crying, her eyes are all red and her breathing is hitched and he would like nothing more than to take her into his arms.

“I just… I talked to my mom about it and she –”

“You told your mom?!”

He hasn’t told anyone, mainly because she asked him not to. OK, so Danny knew, but he figured it out all by himself, it doesn’t really count. He had felt weird about it, but now it kind of makes sense. It’s like she’s ashamed of him or something.  

Tessa looks at him, pleadingly.

“She was very supportive but she made some really sensible points… us skating together and carrying on like we have done… it’s just not a good idea. Look what happened, we’ve been too distracted, we –”

“You’re not seriously suggesting we missed the Olympics because we’re seeing each other, I mean –”

“I dunno, I –” she stammers. “It’s more like… when I’m with you I forget everything else and it’s just… I’m only 16, Scott, it’s not like we’re going to be together forever, is it?”

It is like a punch to the gut to hear her say it. It’s what Danny had warned him about, but it is so at odds with everything he feels when he’s with her. When they’re together he can’t imagine ever letting her go. Like, there’s no amount of growing up he can imagine that would make him not love her anymore.

“No,” he says, stubbornly.

“No?” she repeats, dumbly.

“No, I won’t let you do this. We’re great together, we are, and you know it!”

“Scott,” she counters, looking weary to the bone. “We’re always fighting. We fight more now than we ever have done.”

“And so what? People do fight, you know? You tell me when I’m being a cocky bastard and I tell you when you’re being a pain in the ass! It’s OK to feel things, you know? To let them out every once in a while? Just because you won’t admit to the truth –”

“So what? We do this? And then when it ends, you’ll not even –”

He interrupts her, can’t even let her think that thought, he’ll never –

He grabs her hands in desperation, feeling a stab in the heart when she tries to twist away from him, as if looking him in the eye causes her physical pain.

“Tessa, it’s not going to be easy, it’s probably going to be really hard. But I’m willing to do that, if that’s what it takes to be with you. I want all of you, forever, you and me, _together_.”

She starts sobbing.

“You’re saying that now,” she cries.  

“Can you do something for me, please?” he implores. “Can you just picture your life for me, five years from now, ten years from now? Am I there? Are we together? Is that what you want?”

“It’s not that simple –” her voice breaks on the tears stuck in her throat.

“What do you want, Tess?”

“I just – I only want to be skating with you. Anything else is just too much.”

He’s silenced for a moment, until he can get his bearings. It feels as if she’s pulled a rug out from under him and everything he would have sworn on a half hour before is gone, turned to ashes.

He only has one trump left to play.

“Is that what you really want? I’ll accept it, if it’s what you really want. But you have to tell me you don’t love me, tell me you don’t want to be with me.”

She turns to him then, eyes glassy.

“I’ll always want to skate with you, you’re my best friend, I don’t –”

He looks at her, stares her down. He can’t believe what she’s doing.

“You’re a coward, Tessa Virtue.” he tells her and then he has to get out of there.

\--

When Tessa is 17 and Scott is 19, they are right on track for all of their dreams, they medal at Worlds and place at all the major competitions, training harder than ever. 

Well, all of their dreams except for the ones that she sometimes has when she doesn’t actively visualise a future full of goals and success and accolades, the dreams that feature Scott in a different role than skating partner, the dreams that wake her up at night, all hot under the cover, the ghost of his lips on hers and she wants to cry from being so lonely even though she sees him every day, touches him, holds him, but in none of the ways that seem to count, late at night, in her room.

It’s pointless to dwell on it though. Despite his declaration of undying love it took him all of five minutes to find another girlfriend – he’s been seeing Jess Dubé since the summer and even though Meryl has told her that Charlie has told her that they’ve been hot and cold for this entire time (apparently there is history with Jess’ skating partner), they are all over each other’s Facebook profiles. She tries to scroll past endless pictures of them on vacation, together in Ilderton, at various Moir family occasions.

They skate to _Umbrellas of Cherbourg_ that season, and they study the movie together, religiously, for inspiration for their on-ice characters. As they sit there, shoulder to shoulder, she can’t help but wonder if their story is also destined for a similarly tragic ending because she never even told him how she really felt. She thought not being together would sort them out, put them in the right frame of mind to win and succeed, but it turns out it has only made him bitter and her unhappy.

He’s so angry with her, and it often shows, even though he sometimes seems to forget and she gets a taste of how wonderful it used to be between them, trusting and open. Maybe she should have never kissed him that night, never opened that Pandora’s Box and then they would still be OK. Maybe she just needs to move on.

It’s been over a year and so when Fedor asks her out after a week after her 18th birthday, she says yes.

\--

When Tessa is 18 and Scott is 20, her world and all her dreams come crashing down around her.

When she finally gets the diagnosis for the pain that has been bothering her for over a year, she feels like laughing because what’s wrong with her is that she’s trained so hard that her tissues are strangling her muscles, that her body can’t contain all the effort she’s put in and she shoved deep down, and expected it to work that way.

It didn’t.

That’s what she’s always done. That’s what she did with Scott, right? She just took it and pushed him away, pushed it all down, worked harder, tried more, and the pain that had been bearable before came later, came back with a vengeance, hurt so badly once she finally thought she had it all under control. Now she doesn’t know how to be around him anymore.

She still had skating, though.

The pain has been there for a while, has become her constant companion, pushing itself between her and Scott on the ice, because she can’t tell him how bad it is and yet she can’t keep her pain from him, not entirely. For the first time in their partnership, which has always been about equal striving for excellence, she truly is the weak link, the thing dragging them, dragging him, down. She’s built her world around this, around him and so has he, and now she’s screwing them over.

“You need surgery,” her team doctor has told her and has referred her to a sport clinic specializing in the syndrome.

She’s pretty sure the surgery won’t fix what’s wrong between her and Scott.

The truth, she can finally admit to herself, is that she’s in love with him. She’s in love with him and has been since before she even knew what love was, has chosen him in her heart long before she even had a choice. It’s like the adults let them loose on each other too young, and she imprinted on him before she could realize how dangerous that would be. Loving him came over her like taking her first breath or learning how to move, learning how to dance. She can’t remember it starting. Before she had any time to think about it, before she had known what it was, it had already happened to her, so effortlessly and so completely and horribly, horribly final.

And even though she’s told him a hundred, maybe a thousand times, whispered it against his sweaty brow or into his shoulder when he’s held her, mouthed it to him through smiles and tears and both of those at the same time, she can never tell Scott that she loves him now. How she loves him.

“I can’t give it up, Mom, I just can’t-” her voice even chokes up on the words, the thought of not skating anymore, the thought of – _oh god_ – Scott skating with someone else. It’s like an open bone fracture, too painful and awful to look at too closely.

“I think you should come home, honey,” her mom tells her, and she hangs up and cries and then packs her bag to leave for Canada.

She doesn’t see Scott for another two months.

//


End file.
